Pop 89: 100 Kinds of Hope
By Madonna Hamel
Hope has a checkered past, a sullied reputation. We’d like to trust hope, we raise it to dizzying heights, and then, so often, it falls. For every kid who can’t quite show up for his own life, there’s a Grandma who knows the world would be worse off without him. She’d rather have high hopes than low expectations.
My own relationship with hope is spotty. At the moment a red velvet Christmas ornament, with the word “Hope” embroidered in gold, hangs from my lamp. On my table is my Advent wreath- with four candles, one for each week of the season. The first candle I light every morning is the candle of “hope”.
I must admit hope is one virtue I find awkward to admit to. I’m both embarrassed and touched by it. Perhaps it comes from those years spent trying to practise Buddhism, when I came to see hope as illusion. It keeps us out of the present moment, pitches us forward into a highly anticipated plan for the future. It’s not very brave or practical, I thought. Better to stay in the day than saddle myself with “the burden of hope’, as my brother sometimes refers to it.
But I wonder if hope isn’t just a human response to love - or wanting the best for the people we love, including ourselves? It gets us out of bed. And, as a Catholic school girl, I was taught it is a virtue, right up there with faith and love. The word “virtue”, comes from the Old French, meaning “force,” “vigour,” “strength of character” and even “courage” - the opposite of what I’d come to believe.
Some of us may have great reserves of hope, but regardless, we all need to work at it. Hope requires attention. And, quite frankly, we’d rather put our efforts elsewhere- like preparing for the moment when somebody or something inevitably lets us down. Again. Hope feels like a trap. And besides, “vices” have more cache. In a glib and cynical world, vice is the cooler pursuit.
However, vices, by their nature, tend to blossom into addictions. But vice has a mega-public relations team behind it. For all the contempt we might feel for pushy evangelicals, they can never outdo the evangelizing PR machine of consumerism - promising a world of excitement, youth, popularity and beauty. No one wants to be preached at. Everyone, it appears, wants to be seduced.
Like most addictions, anticipation is everything. When you are suddenly caught in a situation where real vice is present, you learn, very quickly that everyone is in it for themselves, and there’s ever enough “it” to go around. People who think hell is where all the “fun” people go, have yet to visit there.
I recall a young woman telling me that the kind of men she preferred were “the bad boys”. I countered with: “you know what a bad boy is, right? He’s a guy who behaves badly and doesn’t feel he needs to be responsible to the people he harms, BECAUSE HE’S A BOY.” No doubt she assumed he’d instantly see the light with a catch like her. The hubris of addiction tells her: you’ll be more than enough for him, you’ll be the one who changes him. She could be; miracles happen. Or she’s consciously planning to turn him into her little project, after the “thrill” of dating a “bad boy” wears off. I suppose that’s a kind of hope. But it’s a kind of delusional confidence in one’s abilities. Better to stop falling for “bad boys” and hope for a “grown man”.
Where hope runs afoul is when we think that’s all we need to do - hand the whole thing over to hope. I remember talking to a man with forty years of recovery. I asked him if he believed that some people are hopeless - his answer: “Hope springs eternal.” His response brought more questions: Springs from what? The ground? My inner, untaped well? This must be a transcendent hope. Can you have hope without faith? Some people say the reverse, you can’t have faith without hope. Or, put another way, hope is what you have until you get your faith, whether you lost it or never had. And even then- faith in what? I suspect something bigger than the “bad boy” or the newest weight-loss drug or anything “trending”.
The opposite of hope is despair. Which happens to be a vice. I remember when I was taught that despair was a major sin - it seemed so unfair. “Oh great, I’m in deep despair and I’m sinning as well, thanks, Ye Comforter.” But when you look at the meaning of the word “sin”: “to miss your mark and lose you way”- it becomes clear to me that despair is the ultimate loss, short of losing one’s life.
That we consider despair a sin is not a punishment. But a flag of warning: don’t go there! The crossing guard-angel of the school of life is holding up his stop sign and saying: don’t step out into oncoming traffic! This too shall pass. To do so is to betray yourself, to rob us of you. You belong. Stay put until the coast is clear. Then try again. You are part of this big lesson we are all learning.
Theologian Cynthia Bourgeault says hope: “is a quality of aliveness. It does not come at the end, as the feeling that results from a happy outcome. Rather, it lies at the beginning, as a pulse of truth that sends us forth.” And you enter hope through surrender; through the willingness to let go of everything we are presently clinging to. Then, hope enters us and fills us with its own life—a quiet strength beyond anything we have ever known.”
Perhaps Emily Dickinson says it best: “Hope is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without words - And never stops at all.”