“We can choose Hope or Despair”
We are past the fullness of summer, in the church’s season of Creation, heading toward Harvest Thanksgiving, and Autumn. This, my first summer in the Kootenays, has challenged me as I have shifted and pivoted during the changing climatic conditions of heat, sun, smoke, storms, and fire while navigating the ups and downs of social challenges with folk. More and more are dealing with grief, death, health challenges, overdoses, forced relocation, and precarity of income, housing and community. Fire alerts and evacuation orders have been on everyone’s minds, as individuals and communities face anxiety, uncertainty, and pain as we look to a future that has not yet been determined. We strive to hold fast to tenets addressing our love of God, love of neighbour, care for creation, and justice for all. However, personal challenges often derail community and society efforts to find solutions for all.
In all this, it becomes very easy for some to give up. We lose hope, we lose connection with the Holy One, with community and families, as so many get disheartened and disillusioned concerning their future as individuals, and within larger structures. So often I have heard the laments of persons, wondering if life will ever shift, if, how, and when God will be present in the midst of their lives and provide them with feelings other than anger and despair.
I find myself remembering back to the stories of my family of origin, as they faced the realities of surviving the Blitz in Coventry in World War II, of rebuilding amid the ashes and chaos of their community —like a phoenix— while working steadily toward a reality that was locked in a covenant of hope, determination, care and love to a broken people in a shattered world.
We are no longer in the throes of a global war in the same way, yet we are faced with so many conflicts that affect us individually, communally and globally. We can so easily become disillusioned and disoriented.
These days I am finding a reread of portions of Deuteronomy to be bringing perspective and hope. In the midst of offering the ‘second law,’ the Israelites through Moses are addressing a way to live, a way to honour neighbour and stranger, self and God (Deuteronomy chapters 6 – 30). This is continually embraced in a dialogue of love of God, self and neighbour, as epitomized in the Shema: “Here O Israel…” (Love God with all your heart, body, mind and strength, and in keeping the commandments). We hold to this through our Christian Spirituality by adding the tenet to love one’s neighbour as oneself. I feel the impact of our decisions and actions is seen in the exhortation that Moses offers in Deuteronomy 30: 11 – 16. Here the writer of Deuteronomy reminds us that we have a choice. We can choose hope or despair. So often I feel that we simply exist, or choose death and adversity rather than life and prosperity. This involves a reexamination of self, of community, and world, as we struggle with how to move and live in the present. We can choose to accept the failures of self, community, and society, or we can choose to bring the presence of God into our dialogue, enabling it to be a dynamic exploration of how we can rise from brokenness and despair to a resurrected life of hope and forward movement that brings justice, dignity and care to self, to others, to all.
Consider your place and your challenges this autumn. As summer draws to a close, do you find yourself dying to hope or rising from despair? Can you move and work diligently in humility and care to find solutions with others (both within and beyond the church) so that life and love become the priorities? I believe when we explore and act upon these things, slowly we will participate in the long path to justice, equality, dignity, and love for all. Be present, work hard, show gratitude, and live in humility with all.
