Hope as Resistance
It is so easy to lose hope during this time, if you live in the United States.
The amount of negative political news, the exhaustion of being outraged, the constant hearing of a man’s name, and the embrace of hatred by so many rather than love.
Last Monday, I took a break. I didn’t go on social media, I didn’t watch the news, and I didn’t read any news. I texted my friends- “I don’t want to know, so for a day, don’t text me” since we often talk about politics in our texts. I even told my wife, who was going to stay on social media for the day, “you will see, just warn me if it is bad, so I can brace myself for tomorrow, but otherwise I don’t wanna know.”
It was difficult as I am a news junkie of sorts, my Blue Sky and Substack are filled with reporters. Part of my morning is reading headlines and articles from Al Jazeera and AP News, since I’ve pretty much given up on American news reporting, which was once dear to me. For a day though, I needed to step away because I knew it was going to be bad.
Instead, I read The Spirit of Hope by Byung-Chul Han a philosophy book about hope. It is a very short book, but packed with a reminder that there seems to be a drive to continually keep us separate and against one another. There is bad news, after bad news that wants to destroy our soul. For Han, hope is the place of resistance and the place we draw strength from. We cannot lose hope especially in the face of a deeply divided and broken world.
This year, as shared in an earlier blog post, part of my intentional soul caring reading has been Howard Thurman. The same day, I focused on hope, I also read several Howard Thurman prayers from his book, The Centering Moment. Throughout the month of January, I’ve been reading a few prayers at a time and you can find some of the quotes I loved as notes on my Substack page. What I loved about Thurman was he held in tension the difficulties of the world he was facing, with the hope he had for the world and the love of God extended to him and to others. He didn’t want to wave off the fact that during his time, his people were fighting for rights, there were people getting hurt, the world seemed to be burning, but he never wanted to lose the spark of hope and the love for one another. Almost all of his prayers, sit on this tension line.
Another practice I have added to my Rule journey has been to take walks of wonder. This practice came from yet another book (I am an Enneagram 5, so it is kind of my thing) How to Winter by Kari Leibowitz while the book is about her studies in countries that have long losses of light and longer winters; how they stay sane and she found are often very happy, I found the book addressed the long winters in our lives as well. One of the simplest practices, she found, were individuals went on wonder walks at least twice a week. These were intentional walks in the winter where the goal was to be wowed by the beauty of the Earth and the beauty that can only be found in Winter. The people took the minimal daylight they had and used it to be wowed by beauty.
To me, it was a way to maintain hope. When we can still call the world beautiful, despite everything seemingly falling apart, we can hold onto hope.
Finally yesterday, during a time when we share moments of joy in our worship service, my musician said the most profound and simple statement- “Sometimes despite everything happening in the world, you have to say I had a good day” and he shared his good day.
Again, it is not ignoring what is happening or forgetting the voices of those who are suffering, but to me, holding on to hope, admiring beauty, being awed, is a way of putting your own oxygen mask on first before heading back into the field to proclaim and prophesize. Hope is a way of connecting with God first and a way of resisting, so you don’t get broken in the process.