Hope

She stirs in the still hard ground of my grief Messenger of hope, promise of re-leaf Naked and newborn without armour or shield Witness to healing (to wounds already healed?) I fear that she yet may succumb to a frost That the rage of this winter, with all that’s been lost Which howls through the day and bites in the night Could still come to ravage her spirit so slight And I wonder that something so gentle and small Could bring this much comfort - could break through at all

* * *

It’s not so easy to feel hopeful these days. In a world beset with uncertainty, conflict and injustice, to be full of hope would indeed be foolish. But I do try to keep a space in my heart for a glimmer of hope. And that seems to be enough. For hope is like a crack in the wall where wildflowers take root. Quietly, steadfastly, whilst no-one is watching, they grow strong. Until there comes a point when the wall succumbs to the weight of beauty (or truth, or justice). How else did the slave trade end, or women get the vote?

Part longing, part vision, part prayer, hope is the earth into which we plant our actions. It nourishes, anchors and sustains Will. Without hope, the impulse to act appears futile.  To be hope-less means to be in ‘despair’ (the word comes from the French for hope ‘espoire’). Despair chills the heart and hardens it into defeat, bitterness and blame. So much of our contemporary politics seems to leak out of the hopeless heart. Shorn of hope, we lose touch with agency and self-responsibility. In its place, we search around for magical rescuers who promise to ‘make it all better’.

Hope doesn’t promise us anything. She doesn’t have a crystal ball or a looking glass. She doesn’t know how it will all turn out. But she does know about the ebb and flow of tides, the cycles and rhythms of life. Sensitive to the mere whisper of change, she is first to feel the quickening of spring enfolded in the bleak heart of mid-winter.

* * *

Of course there are times when hope seems to desert us. When my young nephew died suddenly, shortly after his fifteenth birthday, I lost touch with hope for a while. To hope for a quickening of the journey through grief would have been to refuse to stay with the crawling agony of mourning and its transforming  power. In truth I had no idea what to hope for. The months after his death seemed glacial. Everything moved very slowly. It was a long winter.

One January morning, desperate to feel life returning, I set out early for a walk. The ground was hard and covered in frosted leaves. Nothing moved. And there she was, nodding her white bells in the shivering air. A single snowdrop. That’s when it dawned on me - hope may be small, but she will always find a way to break through. Looking back on that time now, I know that although I lost touch with hope, hope never lost touch with me. Hope was what stopped me freezing over.

Perhaps this is what Emily Dickinson is reaching for when she writes:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without the words - And never stops - at all.

Hope, the poet reminds us, makes its home deep in the soul. It is not a toy for us to pick up and put down, not an ‘optional extra’. Hope is somehow seeded in the very ground of life itself. It’s nature is both tender and enduring.

* * *

What I begin to realise is that when I feel hope has deserted me, it’s often because I am hoping for the wrong thing, for something which is simply not within the natural order of things (I hope for the burden of life’s uncertainties to be lifted, for my children’s lives to be without challenge or loss). Or I’m hoping for the right thing, but I cannot bear the uncertainty of waiting (I hope for an immediate ceasefire, for the world to shift on its axis overnight).  I begin to understand that hope grows stronger when I lean in to the mystery of a greater purpose, an unfolding pattern of transformation which lies beyond the limits of my comprehension. Hope is directly correlated with the degree to which I am able to trust in the existence and the goodness of this emergent mystery.

Recently I’ve been experimenting with choosing hope. Hope has become a kind of muscle I am strengthening through exercise and repetition. Practicing hope seems to activate a sense of possibility. And ‘possibility’ changes everything. Because when something is even remotely possible, it becomes worth striving for. Possibility ignites Will. The more I turn my attention to what might be possible, the more encouraged I feel to play my part. I recognise that for life to flow and thrive, I need to meet hope half way.

So I hope for strength to bear uncertainty. I hope for courage to face my fears. I hope for a ceasefire in my heart. I hope for the continuing companionship of travelling souls, for the willingness to stand with them come rain or shine. More than anything, I hope that all the small acts of decency, kindness, courage and imagination are adding up, like snow silently falling all night, so that one day we’ll wake to see a different kind of world. One day.  Like stonemasons building the great medieval cathedrals, we need to act in service of a future we may never see. Hope needs to have a long arm.

* * *

The Hebrew word for hope (Tikvah) also means cord or rope. In this sense hope is something made of many strands bound together that we can hold on to (or which holds onto us). Hoping alone is rarely strong enough to withstand the extremity of life’s challenges. So we must hope together, like geese flying in formation. Each one of us takes turn to face the headwind so others can make the most of the slipstream. 

This morning I will spend an hour with my client, a young mother who is navigating her way through stage four cancer.  Together we circle around hope and despair. Is it foolish to hope in dark times like these? Or is hope the very thing that makes life, however long or short, worth living? I choose to hope in dark times. These days my hopes are simpler. I hope for understanding, for strength and for the capacity to love.  So today I will hold the flicker of hope for my client, even and especially when she loses touch with it herself. I do this because hope is what stops life freezing over. It is what keeps us moving forward.

Grounded in hope we can step into the unknown and think the unthinkable. Few people have understood this more deeply perhaps than cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who was progressively paralysed by Motor Neurone Disease. In the film about his life, ‘The Theory of Everything’, Hawking says:

There should be no boundaries to human endeavor. We are all different. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope. 

Yes. ‘There is always something you can do’. I would add only this - perhaps it is also true that ‘while there is hope, there is life’.