4-3-11 Hope after the blossoms
So, how are you with hope these days?
Speaking for myself, if I weren’t a person of faith, I’d probably be a cynic, chuckling away at history’s cyclical dark comedy. There are, after all, so many good, dark chuckles out there. Take the fact that 2011 is the centennial year of humankind’s first successful aerial bombing of itself; and the place we bombed then is the same place we’re bombing now: Libya.
I am first, last, always, a realist; a person who’s interested in considering the world as it actually is. So, if I hadn’t hooked up with God, the great Whatever, I’d be dismissing hopeful people such as myself – all us optimistic souls who believe goodness and kindness are the way to go – as complete doofuses.
(Astrid Riecken - FOR THE WASHINGTON POST)
Of course, hope is easy, even for cynics, in the spring. Those first brave snowdrops and crocuses poke their cheerful selves up through the snow, followed apace by stout early daffodils, anemones, cherry blossoms and dandelions, and here comes hope, a fleeting expection that both ourselves and our world can do better. After our long winters of personal and global discontent, this blossom-fueled optimism sends us rushing outside to dance in the streets and hug strangers. Hope briefly trumps reason: For those brief shining days, we feel that everything is fundamentally all right, society’s screw-ups are transient; human beings are open-hearted creatures intent on doing right by each other. I am so right there, dancing and hugging, convinced for a few days or weeks that the world really is being remade into a better version of itself.
But then the blossoms always fall, while the bombings always continue; and I realize that not much – or maybe nothing — about the world has gotten less screwed-up. Spring’s hope is whipped-cream hope, not meat-and-potatoes hope. Pessimism beckons. If I am to be a year-round hopeful person, rather than a cynical person, I need heartier fare than blossoms. So what is hope, anyway?
For me, as a person of faith, hope is a cheerful acceptance that I have no control over anything other than my own efforts, combined with a quiet confidence that my life is, and will continue to be, an adventure worth having. No matter what happens to me, I—as a person who lives in companionable partnership with God, the great Whatever —will go on feeling comfortable with who I am in the world as it actually is.
I know from living both on my own and in partnership with God that, as a person of faith, I am kinder, gentler, more useful, much more hopeful person; much better at doing what I can, instead of sitting around moaning that I can’t do all that much. Don’t ask me to explain how or why hanging out with the great Whatever fuels the hope in me. I don’t know and I don’t care; I’m just glad that it does. As Van Morrison put it; it ain’t why, why, why, why, why; it just is.
Hope, as I see it, is both the gift and obligation that comes from choosing to live in partnership with God. You and I cannot make the blossoms last forever, we cannot remake the whole world into a kinder, gentler, less greedy place; but we can change how we, ourselves, deal with others – which as I see it makes us hope on two feet.
The way I see it is: As a person of faith, I become not just a feeler of hope, but a participant in it.
You with me on this?
Tags: bombing Libya then and now, hope, unconventional faith
Hope, faith and love are all action word and not just emotions. My hope for the future is way I do what I do. My faith in God is why I strive to be better. My love for my family is why I work for change and know that it is only through work that I can make a change. James says “faith without works is dead”. That is why seeing the world the way it is (as a realist) so important. Emotional goggles blind us to the work that needs done, and we don’t face the hard decisions. 10 years ago there were 44 conflicts or wars going on in the world and of them 42 where fighting because of “religion”, yet only Paul Harvey reported it, why, because too many people are addicted to religious traditions and fairy tales that have nothing to do with faith in God or common sense. Having faith and being a realist….that is a great combination.
I find it wonderful and interesting that you, as a person of faith and I, as a person of faith are able to see this place in such opposite terms and also see ourselves as realists. It is evidence of our unity.
Yet in my eyes, the human forms that we embody on this earth are (in all reality) unpredictable, greedy, inconsiderate, protective to a fault, murderous and selfish. I have complete confidence that we will continue as seperate tribes that will continue to massacre each other to claim superiority. Even the good among us claim that we have too kill the evil among us in order to save the innocent among us. We pray to our respective gods as we clutch our weapons and rush into battle. To some it is patriotic and corageous.To others, like myself, the insanity is staggering.
Some can find happiness in the observance that once in a while there is a ray of light, that we can proclaim as a sign of joyous divinity. I am not quite so convinced because (as the saying goes)..”even a broken clock is correct twice a day” .
All of this however does not effect my faith in the purity of the home in which we will reunite .. I too believe that “It is what it is”. In my case I have complete hope and faith that the entirety of the souls that have ever existed or ever will exist, will know the full extent of the forgiveness of the great whatever. I also find my greatest solice in knowing that an end is promised.
It is my belief that the soul is not responsible for the sickness that we are born into. In the final judgement, we will ALL be judged as a part of the purity. I have my doubts about how many religious would share in that belief, but it is the core of my faith as it is the source of my peace.
Don’t look now but you seem to be waxing poetic. Ah, but to be a hopeful realist…it makes the mind reel and the knees quiver. The realist is SUPPOSED to be the eternal cynic scoffing at the puzzled, empathetic looks on the faces of the hope-filled as they ponder the world’s gesticulations of wrath. The hope-filled is SUPPOSED to be the starry-eyed daydreamers aghast at the incredulity of the heartless realist. Put them together and you’ve got yourself a paradox. I like it!
I think hope is absolutely fundamental in our lives. I’m not talking optimism, but hope – facing each day because you are alive and there are impacts you can make on your own life and on others. I’m not a Christian, but one of Paul’s great contributions to humankind was his establishing the three Christian virtues of faith, hope and love. This was done at a time when Greek philosophy and mythology were still powerful motivators, and you will recall the Pandora’s box myth that has “hope” as the one evil that was kept in the box and wasn’t released on the world. Yes, the Greeks saw hope as an evil. Life was difficult at the time just surviving and why add to the torment by having hope.
I argue that contrary to the traditional belief that love is the greatest of the three Christian virutues, it is hope that is the greatest. I would submit that without hope, why even consider love or faith.