Hope is on my mind. As black men are murdered while pleading for their lives, I wonder about hope. As hard~won protections and the checks and balances at the heart of our Constitution are dismantled, I wonder about hope. As trees die in a seemingly endless drought, a local effect of environmental degradation, I wonder about hope. And as a virus reveals just how vulnerable our precious and miraculously complex human bodies are, I wonder about hope.
I'm not alone. Broadcast journalist Krista Tippett recently explored this topic in an article in Orion magazine. For Tippett, hope has nothing to do with idealism, optimism or wishful thinking. "It is a muscle, a practice, a choice," she writes, "to live open~eyed and wholehearted in the world as it is and not as we wish it to be."
A worthy practice indeed, to close our eyes to nothing while we engage fully from the heart. But realistically, how can we see the horror without despairing or closing our hearts given the enormity of it all? Beyond absorbing the news in digestible doses, what can we do?
Enlarging our perspective is essential. Wisdom, personally and for our species as a whole, often emerges out of pain and chaos. It is seldom easily won and to achieve it we must see what is, with all masks and pretense removed. As awful as things are, as much as we might wish it otherwise, we are seeing now a reality we need to see. It doesn't make us feel good, but horror clearly seen offers the possibility of substantive change.
But there is more. To survive this task, we must see truly. And that means we must also see all that is NOT horror. "We are strange creatures," Tippett writes. "Our strangeness turns up as ugliness and betrayal and destruction, and it turns up as bravery and creativity and unfathomable dignity. I see beautiful lives, everywhere, stitching new relationships across rupture, seizing new life out of loss.” Desmond Tutu puts it this way: “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”
Darkness and light. Pain and joy. Brutality and generosity. Disregard and compassion. Brokenness and resilience. Such is humankind. Always has been and likely always will be. And yet, we can lean toward the Light. In so doing, we encourage our tender hearts, and those of our companions on this Earth, to remain open and alive. We remind us all that we are more than our baser impulses. Much more.
Woodstock organizer Joel Rosenman said of the festival’s attendees, “We believed…that inside them was a loving nature, a decency, a fineness of spirit. You can forget it sometimes, but very few of us want to be other than that.” Yes, it is easy to forget, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
And so, we remain open~eyed before the ugliness laid out before us. And we choose to live wholeheartedly in a world that is not as we wish. We don’t escape into idealism, wishful thinking, or a spirituality that minimizes earthly pain or focuses on the perfection of an afterlife at the exclusion of caring for this one.
We seek change and healing in the here and in the now. We choose political leaders who have the best chance of serving with wisdom, enacting policies that promote justice for all, and speaking to and encouraging our better natures. In our personal lives~~in our families, our workplaces, and our communities~~we commit to growing compassion and cooperation. Seeing the darkness, still we lean into the Light.
And of course, dear friends, this also requires that we continue to search for and transform the callousness in our own hearts, so our loving natures shine out, our innate decency grows, and we become more fine of spirit.
And we hope. Not blindly or without full awareness of the challenges before us. We hope as a practice, as a choice to live open~eyed and wholehearted in the world as it is. In the words of Dickens, we "hope, hope to the last."
In love and in hope,
Leia
If you'd like to read Krista Tippett's article in Orion, please click here. It's a gem!
