Hope

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…if hope can lead to complacency and even paralysis, so can despair. First, both relieve us from the uncertainty of an unknown future.  For one, a happy ending is assumed; for the other a tragic ending is inescapable.  Second both promise us a future that asks nothing of us.  Because things are going to turn out fine you don’t have to change anything.  Because there is nothing you can do to avert doom, you don’t have to do or change anything.

          Brian McLaren, Life After Doom

 

Our great mistake is that we tie hope to our outcome.”

          Cynthia Bourgeault

 

When our prime motive is love, a different logic comes into play.  we find courage and confidence, not in the likelihood of a good outcome, but in our commitment to love.  Love may or may not provide a way through to a solution to our predicament, but it will provide a way forward in our predicament…we will live as beautiful bravely, and kindly as we can as long as we can, no matter how ugly, scary, and mean the world becomes, even if failure and death seem inevitable.

          Brian McLaren

 

“One of the ways we turn this tide and keep the avalanche going is with the joy… because authoritarianism cannot live in a country that is full of joy. It feeds on darkness and hatred and it cannot survive with its opposite. It’s really important going forward to remember to bring joy to this game… Do the things you love… Authoritarianism cannot survive amongst a happy people.” –

Heather Cox Richardson (live stream, 7.30.24)

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the day is brown

the smoke of a hundred fires

denying the sun

killing its brightness

 

everything is muted

even the cats seem lethargic, listless

 

the world is an inferno

it is darkness and destruction

and hope

has turned to despair

 

and despair?

has it made us lethargic and listless?

 

perhaps it is time to “hope against hope”

to find that “mystical hope” (Bourgeault)

that leads to fierce love, desperate love

 

Ah, desperate love

that love that is irresistible

that will not let us go

and thing, as it springs up inside us

spills forth

 

a light in the darkness

a touch of transforming yeast

in the foul dough of desolation

 

I dare not hold to illusions or delusions

and yet I cannot sit idly by

and hope that “God has this”

 

Instead, I am to love fiercely

holding fast to the truth

that evil and good, rage and calm

sorrow and joy, love and hate

can exist at the same time

 

and chose kindness, beauty, and generosity

even in a world that is ugly and mean

knowing that even if I do not change the world

it might change me

and, perhaps

change the lives I touch

 

but whatever the outcome might be

 

Even if MAGA wins, even if racism flourishes

and AR-15s proliferate

and the planet burns

 

I will resist hate and violence

resist retribution

and domination

 

Because I love

God

and you, and you, and you

and love CAN live in the furnace of hate