Hope As A Spiritual Discipline

A friend preached today a wonderful sermon on the Gospel reading for the day. She embodied a call to the justice and peace of the Kingdom of God as she shared her attempt, aided by a group of teenagers, to make any sense of this parable of investing, which seems like cruel capitalism writ large for many of us.

What struck me the most about the servant who was given one talent and then was chewed out by the master was that he acted in fear.  As I reflected on this reading, I realized again that I carry with me a large bag of fear, that unpleasant feeling of perceived risk or danger, real or not.  When I act out of this fear, I end doing stuff that is so often counter to being a child of God that I wonder how the hell I even got to that place.  For me, fear often has little to do with logic - I fear twilight right now, as well as loud sirens.  Having not seen my dad buried, I carry with me the fear that somehow his spirit will body jump into me.  Now that fear may be cinematic or useful as a plot line in graphic novels, but there is very little that is logical about that risk actually coming true.

My friend artfully suggested that hope can best be seen as a spiritual discipline, nurturing a desire for something to happen, while expecting or being confident that something will come true.  Hope often requires a vision, a sensual connection to that thing or person hoped for.  Rather than the fast-food optimism that makes for a hungry soul, hope offers all of us a to slow & persistent way to nurture organic food for the journey we are on.  Nurturing hope in the reign of God can be a way of aligning ourselves with God's will, listening to the often quiet voice, being beneficiaries of God's unbounded grace.

I think I may shared before how much it helps me to see how hope was portrayed in Greek mythology. When Pandora opened Pandora's Box, she let out all the evils except one-- Hope. Apparently the Greeks considered Hope to be as dangerous as all the world's evils. But without hope to accompany all their troubles, humanity was filled with despair. It was a great relief when Pandora revisited her box and let out hope as well.

I've had hope boxed up, pushed in the back of my basement for far too long.  At least for a moment today, my friend put words and images to a box that I've had taped shut for far too long. 

Comments

[lisa]

nice blog

[janet]

C. S. Lewis said, "The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes [fears and doubts] for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and freetings; coming in out of the wind."

May the strength and blessing of coming in out of the wind be yours.

[kbartha]

cool wiki link re pandora and hope... thanks for the reminder. i'm gonna dig into this ancient greek hope thing. intriguing.

[bobbie]

i so needed this today bob. i blogged on fear today too - the daily dig was about it, and it showed me that i was holding on to fear all by myself, afraid to voice it because i didn't want it to affect anyone else around me.

please know i haven't stopped praying. your blogging through this is really ministering to me - actually more than just about anything else in my life right now.

thank you.

ps - i really like the new look, and your sister's quote is spectacular.