Hope

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,”  I Peter 1:3

 

            There have been times over the last 7 weeks when I have said to myself, “I just have to hang in there until... until the Covid-19 curve flattens... until things are normal again... until we can all get back to church... until the weather gets nicer.”   I realized in these thoughts I was putting my energy into hoping for something in the future rather than living fully in the present moment with hope.  There’s a difference.  

            When I was a hospice chaplain, I often found myself helping people to redefine hope.  Hope meant cure, meant getting back to normal, meant holding on for the good days again.  With a prognosis of 6 months or less to live, some people needed to shift their understanding of hope - to find hope in the midst of circumstances they never would have imagined.

            It can be challenging to experience hope when it isn’t tied to an outcome, a positive feeling or the sense that it will all get better in the future.  Hope, however, is also a way of being. It is something that weaves its way into daily life, helping us to accept what is and live without despair.   One author refers to this as the distinction between “ordinary hope” and “mystical hope” and makes the following observations:

•   Mystical hope is not tied to a good outcome, to the future. It lives a life of its own, seemingly without reference to external circumstances and conditions.

•   It has something to do with presence—not a future good outcome, but the immediate experience of being met, held in communion, by something intimately at hand.

•   It bears fruit within us at the psychological level in the sensations of strength, joy, and satisfaction: an “unbearable lightness of being.” But mysteriously, rather than deriving these gifts from outward expectations being met, it seems to produce them from within. *

            As much as I would like to, I can’t conjure up that kind of hope.  We ourselves are not the source of that hope, but the source dwells deeply within us and flows to us with an abundance, so much so that in fact it might be more accurate to say we dwell within it.  Today, you and I can dwell in hope, regardless of our situation, as we journey toward the center, to the innermost ground of our being where we meet and are met by God. 

*Adapted from Cynthia Bourgeault, Mystical Hope: Trusting in the Mercy of God