The Biblio File December 2018 Essay: “Keep Hope”

KEEP HOPE

I hear the word “Hope” more than usual these days. It sounds ethereal, wispy, like Emily Dickinson’s “thing with feathers”, yet we are directed to keep it, to spread it to others, to make sure it stays alive. “Hope” is batted about like a badminton birdie, hard to contain, control, or see. I use the word myself, often quoting the author, artist, or prophet whose vision gives me hope and the belief that our country and our world will one day actually be alright.

But the take on hope that most appeals to me now is from Brian McClaren’s “We Make the Road by Walking”. Some of us in our church are reading this book, and we discuss parts of it with friends who gather weekly at our house during Advent.

To hope, McClaren says, is a very different process than to wish. Wishes are substitutes for action, creating “passive optimism that can paralyze people into happy fogs of complacency.” But real hopes inspire action. Hopes are not just about the future; they guide us how to act now.

Looking for evidence to support this view of hope, I watch Ed, who hopes, in retirement, to volunteer his services as a pastoral counselor. I see him research, write his declarations, meet with committees, as he works out the hows, ifs, and wheres of a new calling.

I see my granddaughter, Sophie, as she takes dancing, singing, and acting classes, watches movie musicals from several decades, and pores over scripts, supporting her hope to be a Broadway actor.

My writing friends and I, in hopes of finishing and publishing rich, engaging novels and memoirs, spend time and money and effort to learn the ins and outs of character depiction, plot development, story arcs. We put in (well, most of the time) our “required” half hours a day at our computers, freewriting or finishing chapters or editing our drafts. I see how much our hope is vitalized when we do the work, how it withers when we neglect it.

Fighting the inhumane actions by our current mess of a government requires and sustains the hope that we can make a difference. Phone calls to legislators, donations to civil rights agencies, and joining organized protests, whether a miles-long throng in Seattle or a hundred people on a street corner in my small town, fall under the “action” category, and feed my hope that we’ll make a difference.

Hope. I love the word itself, love how the “H” sounds breathy and the “ope” sounds solid, love the little blip my heart makes when I hear or say it. I love that, in my reality, hope doesn’t have feathers. As it moves us through action, hope has feet.

I wish you a Merry Christmas. I hope you walk and make the road of peace on earth, good will to all.

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