HOPE

I want to write about hope, though hope leaves me from time to time these days. I want to unpack what hope means when my mind dims with broadcasts of wars and hate, when my gut grips as ICE grabs one more pastor, when my bones ache as our leaders bludgeon our democracy, when my eyes squint to avoid the headlines. When hope feels overwhelmed by life, where do we turn? 

In these sad times, when we can’t grasp ICE’s cruel “catch-of-the-day” and we can’t know when the next bombs will drop, hope feels essential. But why? Well, when hope fades, we struggle to smile, to put one foot in front of the other, to cook dinner, to wish a friend, “have a good day”. Science tells us that hope, the feeling of possibility and opportunity, soothes frazzled hearts and stirs hearts that have numbed. Studies show that hope lessens despair and fights depression. 

And what is hope? Desmond Tutu tells us, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” 

Perhaps Tutu’s light lives in the body. Can we know hope as sun in the belly, a warmth that shines to open us to something other than doom? 

Perhaps hope’s light is also the life force that turns harsh winter snow and ice into daffodils and tulips and birds starting to chirp again. Hope shows up when kids, of all kinds, come out to ride bikes and play jump-rope in public. Maybe we see hope in the light of green spring, the light of children laughing. 

Or perhaps it’s the trio of faith, hope and love which allow immigrants to go out from their homes. These three sacred callings invite our new neighbors onto the bus again, welcome them back to work, and hang out with them as they wait on the sidewalk for their children hopping off the school bus. Perhaps faith, hope and love provide pieces in my how, what, and why puzzle. I know this, and yet I often have no hope myself. So, for help with this mystery, I ask others, “where do you find hope?”

All of the individuals speak about what they do, how they move in the world. (A priest once told me, “Hope won’t solve our problems, just makes them more manageable. But we can’t simply sit around and hope. Hope acts.”)

Here’s my dad near the end of his life: “Dad, how do you feel hope, having just heard that you might live only two years?” He said, “Oh, hope isn’t about my getting better. Hope means tomorrow I’m going to learn to make fudge for Mom. She likes sweets. Hope means the next day I’ll learn how to craft that cutting board you asked me to make in my woodworking shop. Hope is every day that I wake up on this side of the grass.”  

There’s a lesson here for me, for us: hold onto hope which sparks idea-embers when life’s energy flickers.

My Gabonese friend, who’s been told that he’s in danger to drive alone in a car, goes to work every day to share hope, “For me, hope comes from God. I feel hope in my work of drawing blood at the Red Cross. We increase hope for those who need platelets, red cells, and whole blood.”

My Tunisian friend, an American citizen for decades, has learned not to travel out of the U.S.; she might not be let back in. She asks, “Hope?” Then she unfurls her palms to wave an offering, “I make art, soul-feeding stuff for me, and for others, adding beauty to the world.”

Maybe we need to search beyond, Where, why, and what. Maybe we need to focus on how and who.

How? With the darkness of losing work permits, with the cold brutality in detention of innocent men, women and children, howdo we find hope?  

Former president Barack Obama suggests action as how: “Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it… The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.”

I wonder, then, does hope require us to expand outside ourselves, inspire us to ease grief and pain, and to trust that small deeds are not so small because they ripple outward? 

What if we ask, what one kind and wise thing can I do today that could carry a little light into someone else’s darkness?  What if we are the light?  What if we are the hope?

I want to believe this: if enough of us say yes to carrying light, even imperfectly, hope not only survives. It thrives.

And maybe it spreads.