The Unitarian Fellowship of Peterborough

We affirm the unfailing renewal of life. 
Rising from the earth, and reaching for the sun, all living creatures shall fulfill themselves. 
We affirm the steady growth of human companionship.

Rising from ancient cradles and reaching for the stars, people the world over shall seek the ways of understanding. 

We affirm a continuing hope

That out of every tragedy the spirits of individuals shall rise to build a better world. 

Come, let us bring together our spirits that we might build a better world. 

 

 

Are you a hopeful person…or a not-so-hopeful person? Did you read the theme of today’s service as “living hopefully”, or “living, hopefully.” It matters where you place the punctuation. 

 

You know, life can really suck. I mean, even the word ‘hopefully’ has been co-opted by pessimists.   A city applies to host an international event, it plans and decorates with pink all over town, advertises and provides hospitality, and it rains all weekend. It’s darn disappointing. You enter a relationship, dream together, have kids together, and one day your find yourself alone and despairing. You eat right, exercise, pay attention to your body’s messages, and yet a cancer grows within you. Life sucks. You go camping with your family, a long-planned holiday, and a sudden flash flood washes through the campground, and people who were just hoping to have a good time, die. This goes way beyond disappointment and despair. We gather together to worship and to find meaning, and someone walks into the sanctuary and opens fire. Humanitarian efforts to bring aid to oppressed peoples are thwarted by military force. An oil well deep in the Gulf of Mexico explodes and all efforts to stop the flow of oil fail; fish and fowl are dying torturous deaths. This kind of stuff is happening every day all over the world. How can we possibly ‘live hopefully’?

 

I have to admit that I had a lot of difficulty writing this sermon. The notion of hope has a tendency to conger up in me images of ribbons and smiley faces and greeting card platitudes. But still, I find personal stories of hope and psychological heroism in difficult times incredibly inspiring and compelling. As I examine this paradox, I realize that the problem is that we can often be caviler and unrealistic about hope, when in fact, it is a difficult and courageous act.   It would seem that, like so many of the other things we’ve examined in this year’s series on “How Shall We Live,” hope is a deeply spiritual practice that requires intention and personal clarity. 

 

What is hope, really? Some would describe it as an emotion, or a feeling. The dictionary says that it is a wish or desire accompanied by confident expectation of its fulfillment.   But, I’m going to argue with Webster here, and say that this is the definition that gets us into trouble. This is the definition that leads to sugar and fluff, thinking that our wishes and desires will come true. Instead, I’m more inclined to agree with Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic, who wrote, in “The Politics of Hope”: 

Deep in ourselves we carry hope; if that is not the case, there is no hope.

Hope is a quality of the soul, and does not depend on what happens in the world.

Hope is not to foretell or foresee.

It is a directedness of the mind, a directedness of the heart, anchored beyond the horizon.

Hope in this deep and powerful meaning is not the same as happiness because all goes well, or readiness to devote yourself to that which has success.

Hope is to work for something because it is good, and not only because it has a chance to succeed.

Hope is not the same as optimism neither is it the conviction that something will end well.

Rather it is the certainty that something is meaningful, irrespective of the outcome, [or] the result.[1]

 

Hope is a directedness of the heart and mind, which enables you to devote yourself to work for something simply because it is good. It is the certainty that life has meaning. 

 

It is the certainty that life has meaning. I guess this is captured in the adage, “while there is life, there is hope.” If hope is indeed the certainty that life has meaning, then it is the force that gets us up in the morning. It is the inner knowing that trusts that all shall be well, even when things are not going ‘our way.’ In fact, one piece of advice I came across in my research for today said that to cultivate hope, one must embrace hopelessness! That is to say, that hope grows best when we are non-attached to outcomes, and when we give up trying to control how things will turn out. 

 

I guess this is why those who are in the most difficult situations seem to have the most authentic and the most enduring hope. The majority of websites that are found by searching ‘living hopefully’ are in some way related to life-threatening illnesses or dire circumstances. It is in such situations that we most need hope. When things are going well, I suspect we don’t think too much about it.

 

Perhaps I’ve told this story before, but let me tell you (again) about a very memorable moment during my trip to Israel and Palestine in 2004. We, a group from my seminary, were in Bethlehem, which is in Palestine, or the Occupied Territories. We were visiting the YMCA there. First surprise. There’s a YMCA in Bethlehem. Second surprise. There’s no swimming pool, work out room, or summer camp. At this YMCA they are doing trauma counseling and working with children with severe war injuries. I asked one of the directors about how they continue to hope in such circumstances. His answer was that there is no other choice than hope in such circumstances. Either you give up, or you hope. Either way you might die. Either way you cannot control what happens. But to hope is a much more meaningful way to live than to live with despair. 

 

In a document from the Iona community, a writer expresses a similar sentiment. “To feel hopeful is a luxury mostly only enjoyed by people who live in stable, peaceful democracies who have the option to feel despairing. To live hopefully is a daily decision made by people who have nothing else to retreat to.”[2] To FEEL hopeful is a luxury. To LIVE hopefully is a daily decision.   Here again is that paradox…the feel-good, nicey-nice expressions of hope versus a quality of one’s heart and soul that continues to say ‘yes’ to life regardless of the circumstances with which we are faced. 

 

Another reason that I (along with many of you, I assume) have given hope a rather bad rap is that it is so often associated with eschatological thinking…that is, looking forward to the ‘end times’ and hoping to find refuge in a world beyond this one. This can feel like an assault on the Unitarian Universalist brand of humanism, which insists that now is the only time we have, and that when it comes to creating justice and making meaning, we are all there is.  

 

There was an article called “The Journey Toward Hope” in the UU World several years ago.[3] It was written by Linda Hansen, who is a UU minister and a former professor of philosophy. The article built a case for finding hope in the context of community, and while I find that fascinating and persuasive, I’m not going in that direction today. Rather, I want to explore something she touched upon that I think might challenge us.   We can identify with Plato, right? …with his world of ideas? Well, Hansen compares Platonic thought to ‘end times’ thinking…that a world of ideas is essentially just another way to distance ourselves from this world, from painful relationships and responsibilities, from the realities of life and death, and from our human failings.   She wonders, “Is human hope to be found in transcending this world or in embracing it?”

 

What do you think? Does hope lead us away from reality, or is it imbedded in existence?   As for me, my faith tells me it that hope has to be found in embracing this world, and I would offer two thoughts about that.

First of all, the daytime book group, which gives me so much fodder for sermons, as well as just interesting stuff to ponder, is in the process of reading “The Wise Heart” by Jack Kornfield. Kornfield is a Buddhist practitioner and teacher, as well as a psychologist, and the book lays out a psychological roadmap from a Buddhist perspective. This week, we were talking about non-attachment, and how that differs from detachment. Detachment would be Plato’s approach, as well as the disengagement sought after by some evangelical schools of belief. But non-attachment is the practice of letting go of control and concern about the outcomes, and instead, living very much engaged in the world. Non-attachment and hope, it seems to me, are both committed to a perspective that would have us simply trust in the ongoing cycles of life. Non-attachment and hope seem to me to distance themselves from worrying about the future and prefer, instead, to be really present now. 

 

Second, taking that broader perspective allows us to let go of our obsessions with time. Hope requires patience. We can get so focused on seeing outcomes and perfect finished products. In fact, in the vast history of the universe, we humans are just at the very beginning of all that can be. Time and possibility stretch out endlessly in front of us. If that’s not reason for hope, I don’t know what is. 

 

Third, distancing ourselves from investing in the outcomes is not an excuse to sit back and watch. I came across a quote attributed to C. A. Dykstra (but I have no idea who that is). He, or she, said, “Men cannot for long live hopefully unless they are embarked upon some great unifying enterprise - one for which they may pledge their lives, their fortunes and their honour.”   In a similar vein, Tertullian is quoted as saying, “Hope is patience with the lamp lit.”

 

Hope is patience with the lamp lit. To be a hopeful person requires that we actively keep our lamp lit. There are many ways to do this…and like everything else, it requires something of us. It requires as I’ve already said, that we let go of trying to control the outcomes. It requires that we actively cultivate hope by practicing gratitude, and by surrounding ourselves with hopeful people. Hope requires us to act as midwives for that which is healing and life-giving. Hope requires us to see in the brokenness, all of the potential for healing…to see in the hurt, all of the opportunity for forgiveness. One of my favourite readings in our hymnal is the one by Adrienne Rich which says “My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed. I have to cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” Hope is choosing to cast our lot with those who would reconstitute the world. 

 

And I believe that this is why we gather at the Unitarian Fellowship of Peterborough… to choose to cast our individual lots with a group of people, people who have no extraordinary power. We are all just plain folk. We cannot control the future. We cannot predict that everything will go as planned. But we can choose to heal and not to harm, to help and not to hinder, to bless and not to curse, and to live knowing that those choices matter. We can live with hope, knowing that there is meaning. 

 

Our chalice lighting words are reminiscent of the prayer of St. Francis…you know the one…the one that says that if we are to be instruments of peace, then we must choose to sow love where there is hatred, to pardon where there is injury, to have faith where there is doubt, to shine a light where there is darkness, and to have hope where there is despair. 

 

For rather than to just live, hopefully, we would live hopefully! And on some level, that is as simple as where we place the punctuation marks and inflections in our lives.   You are the ones who can make meaning in the world. Your lives matter. And because of that, I am oh so hopeful. 

Amen. 

 

But we have only begun to love the earth. We have only begun to imagine the fullness of life. 

How could we tire of hope! - so much is in bud.

How can desire fail? - we have only begun to imagine justice and mercy.

Only begun to envision how it might be to live as siblings with beast and flower, not as oppressors.

Surely our river cannot already be hastening into the sea of nonbeing?

Surely it cannot drag, in the silt, all that is innocent!
Not yet, not yet – there is too much broken that must be mended,

Too much hurt that we have done to each other that cannot yet be forgiven.

We have only begun to know the power that is in us if we would join our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding that must complete its gesture, so much is in bud.

And with that, we go our hopeful ways, as beginners on the journey toward justice, mercy, and love. Blessed be. 

 

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