Hope
“Dracula’s Lament.”
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Last week’s sermon was about hope. All it amounted to was: We need to keep on hoping!
I was like: But how?
Here are a few suggestions.
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When he became a father, one of my friends wrote:
Adults can despair for a similar reason. They, too, can become unable to conceive of a future in which their needs are met. For adults, though, this is because of too much experience.
Failing to have one’s needs met, year after year, makes it more difficult to imagine how they can be met. Experiencing disappointment, again and again, makes it exhausting or painful to continue thinking of possibilities for meeting those needs.
For humans, this is an impediment to hoping, because what we can hope for depends on what seems possible to us.
(Notice that the same point applies to the world’s needs. Your own needs are mere tributaries. Even if you learn to navigate the tributaries – and the rivers they pour into – you must eventually confront the ocean.)
So for adults deterred by hurt, being hopeful often requires having the courage to allow wounds to be reopened. (Here a theological virtue depends upon a cardinal one.) And for adults worn down by disappointment, being hopeful often requires endurance in the midst of exhaustion.
It’s natural to lack courage. It’s natural to lack endurance. If you lack those things, don’t be too hard on yourself. By all means, enjoy some shelter and rest. But don’t stop at that:
(a) Keep in mind that, from the eternal perspective, we are babies. Our experience is not conclusive. There truly are blessings of which we can’t conceive. As far as you’re able (and if this is even coherent), don’t just hope for what’s imaginable to you.
(b) Ask God for courage and endurance to keep trying to imagine what’s imaginable, so that needs can be met even in this life.
(c) Train yourself in courage and in endurance. Training won’t be enough. But it will help, as long as it isn’t taken as a replacement for (a) and (b).
(d) Soothe others’ wounds, bear others’ burdens, protect them from the full destructiveness of exhaustion and hurt. And sometimes, or maybe just once, you will be in a position to give a person what he or she desperately needs. Then that person will be saved from despair. That person will be lucky (or blessed).
It won’t suffice, spiritually, for that person. But it’ll help, as long as it isn’t taken as a replacement for (a) and (b).
All too often, we’re tempted to think that cultivating hopefulness is primarily a matter of willing ourselves to believe that things will turn out all right. But we can do more than this. We can cultivate hopefulness by removing hindrances to the imagination. We can do this for ourselves by becoming braver, stronger. And we can do it for others by helping to ease their weariness and pain.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Last week’s sermon was about hope. All it amounted to was: We need to keep on hoping!
I was like: But how?
Here are a few suggestions.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
When he became a father, one of my friends wrote:
It’s amazing how much babies live in the moment. If she’s hungry or her diaper is dirty then her world is ending. She has no perspective that says this will probably be fixed in a little while so I’ll just hang on. I suppose that would be a frightening way to live. If I was hungry and couldn’t conceive of a future where I wasn’t I’d probably cry too.I don’t remember how I felt when I was a baby. But yes, when I was a young child, I often had the feeling that my friend attributes to his daughter. I wasn’t carefree.
Adults can despair for a similar reason. They, too, can become unable to conceive of a future in which their needs are met. For adults, though, this is because of too much experience.
Failing to have one’s needs met, year after year, makes it more difficult to imagine how they can be met. Experiencing disappointment, again and again, makes it exhausting or painful to continue thinking of possibilities for meeting those needs.
For humans, this is an impediment to hoping, because what we can hope for depends on what seems possible to us.
(Notice that the same point applies to the world’s needs. Your own needs are mere tributaries. Even if you learn to navigate the tributaries – and the rivers they pour into – you must eventually confront the ocean.)
So for adults deterred by hurt, being hopeful often requires having the courage to allow wounds to be reopened. (Here a theological virtue depends upon a cardinal one.) And for adults worn down by disappointment, being hopeful often requires endurance in the midst of exhaustion.
It’s natural to lack courage. It’s natural to lack endurance. If you lack those things, don’t be too hard on yourself. By all means, enjoy some shelter and rest. But don’t stop at that:
(a) Keep in mind that, from the eternal perspective, we are babies. Our experience is not conclusive. There truly are blessings of which we can’t conceive. As far as you’re able (and if this is even coherent), don’t just hope for what’s imaginable to you.
(b) Ask God for courage and endurance to keep trying to imagine what’s imaginable, so that needs can be met even in this life.
(c) Train yourself in courage and in endurance. Training won’t be enough. But it will help, as long as it isn’t taken as a replacement for (a) and (b).
(d) Soothe others’ wounds, bear others’ burdens, protect them from the full destructiveness of exhaustion and hurt. And sometimes, or maybe just once, you will be in a position to give a person what he or she desperately needs. Then that person will be saved from despair. That person will be lucky (or blessed).
It won’t suffice, spiritually, for that person. But it’ll help, as long as it isn’t taken as a replacement for (a) and (b).
All too often, we’re tempted to think that cultivating hopefulness is primarily a matter of willing ourselves to believe that things will turn out all right. But we can do more than this. We can cultivate hopefulness by removing hindrances to the imagination. We can do this for ourselves by becoming braver, stronger. And we can do it for others by helping to ease their weariness and pain.