I thought about the first line of Alexander Pope’s poem when drawn to write on the topic of hope. During my “research,” I happened upon a TED Talk entitled “The Extraordinary Power of Ordinary People” in which surgeon, Sherwin Nuland offers an unfamiliar definition by a former president of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel: “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
The inspiration for this week’s column first came actually upon coming across three lines written on a wall at Auschwitz: “I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining. I believe in love even when I don’t feel it. I believe in God even when He is silent.”
These words are so powerful and reminded me of one of my favorite movies of all time, “Life Is Beautiful” about a Jewish man who employs “his fertile imagination to shield his son from the horrors of internment at a Nazi concentration camp” by making the entire experience a game. It illustrates like no other film in my purview the power of hope and its role in changing our stories.
Dr. Jean Houston sums it up beautifully, “Change the story and you change perspective; change perspective and you change the world.”
A complete stranger spoke a surprising word of hope to me recently. During a yoga class I happened to be alongside a woman who had suffered a stroke which caused temporary paralysis from the waist down. She proclaimed to still have “balance issues,” but I certainly wouldn’t have noticed.
Towards the end of class she leaned over and said, “I am watching everything you do.” The irony was not lost on me as I generally feel like the most inflexible and uncoordinated person in the room. Women and men of all shapes, sizes and ages seem to go further than I can in any given pose. A few moments later, my classmate added, “Thank you so much for helping me.”
Frankly, I was shocked. I had done absolutely nothing – intentional, that is – to offer my example or assistance. I was simply trying to pay attention, be in the moment and gently take my body as far as it would go.
Her words washed over me like a refreshing rain.
As my children have been returning from college with various needs and challenges, my mind has been somewhat of a battlefield of “inner skirmishes.” Racked by (moments of) self doubt about what I have – or have not – imparted to them in terms of values and character, I have been thinking that whatever I have taught them has somehow not been…enough.
Yet in an ordinary yoga class, an ordinary woman reminded me that perhaps just like her, my children have been watching, and that maybe it IS enough to simply seek to do, however imperfectly, the next right thing and the next right thing after that.
They are watching you too – when you decide not to turn on the TV; when you stop to gaze at a glorious full moon; when you grab an apple instead of a Twinkie; when you choose not to laugh at someone else’s expense; when you speak a microscopic truth; when you allow yourself to be imperfect; when you hope against hope that “it” will all make sense and that maybe, just maybe, “it” will not only turn out well but beyond what you could have ever asked for or imagined.
Could a stranger’s words be a sweet whisper from God?
One of my daily devotional writers Frederick Buechner (Listening to Your Life) seems to affirm the idea: “Who knows what He will say to me today or to you today or into the midst of what kind of unlikely moment He will choose to say it. Not knowing is what makes today a holy mystery as every day is a holy mystery. But I believe that there are some things that by and large God is always saying to each of us. Each of us, for instance, carries around inside himself, I believe, a certain emptiness – a sense that something is missing, a restlessness, the deep feeling that somehow all is not right inside his skin… I believe that this in itself is a word from God, that this is the sound that God’s voice makes in a world that has explained Him away.”
CS Lewis concluded that our dissatisfaction with the things of this world indicates our being made for another, and the apostle Paul in his letter to the Colossians wrote, “The lines of purpose in your lives never grow slack, tightly tied as they are to your future in heaven, kept taut by hope.” (The Message translation). Our life may indeed change course in unexpected ways but with God, I believe, we can “hope unswervingly” in spite of its inevitable twists and turns.
Hope – one imparted, not manufactured – springs eternal because whether we know it or not, we are traveling on what, at times, seems like a tightrope toward the eternal. Hope is not, however, a dangerous thing at all (as I once heard) but rather an essential element in the life of a believer… A hallmark of our faith being lived out in this life and a springboard into the next.
– Caroline Watkins
What lovely thoughts and words, Caroline. All that you said about having children rings especially true for me!
xoxo