Hope [Winter 2016]
I’m sitting on a bench in a park, a forest, really. The bench is on a porch, outside a house. The house is called the Tree House.
I am on a retreat with a group of women on a brisk Saturday in January. We are currently separated, each of us having chosen a space for solace, to exercise a period of silence. I sit quietly on my outdoor bench, gazing at the snow-covered landscape. I’ve arranged a cozy blanket on my lap. The nearby campfire nearby offers another dim warmth, and it is enough to settle in to a period of restful reflection. I wonder what the other women are experiencing: discovering serenity perhaps, or igniting the dormant embers of an unexplored internal self. I remind myself not to compare and contrast. And so I begin to write:
Myself, I am rediscovering hope.
Hope is a word that generates fear for me. Four little letters that can mean dreams can break or hearts can shatter or plans can be changed forever. Because hope means you want something. And you want something you think will be good.
It’s a word I use flippantly. I hope I win the lottery. I hope I lose weight. I hope I feel better, too. There’s not always action in hope. Hope sometimes just sits there, sparkling and shining. Sometimes, out of reach. Frequently I am scared to try – yes, even to try – to reach for that hope.
Because I have been burned and scarred. Part of me blames hope, as though it was the act of hoping that caused the pain.
Yet excuses may no longer linger.
Permanence and pervasiveness do not exist in this life, on this bench, in these woods, on this day or this moment.
Nor will they exist in the next.
Yet hope – hope stays alive, brilliantly calling to me, beckoning me near, exclaiming callously to try to embrace her attitude of faith and her ability to capture the sunshine behind a cloud-filled sky on a winter’s day.
Yes, she says.
Yes, reach for me again. Let me warm you by the embers of my glow. Let me tantalize you with golden goodness and tempt you as a warm blanket covers you and protects you from cold.
It is time to melt the snow.
It is time to melt the snow.
Erika Hovland Bahij, journal entry, winter of 2016
[Present day]
I wrote those words in 2016, when I was pregnant with my son. I was in one of the happiest times of my life. Yet hope was an elusive temptress that arose and disappeared from reach like the smoke from the fire I watched that day. I was not ready to let it melt the protective ice I had built around my heart. I looked at hope as something just out of reach, or as a force with a bitter downside, but even then, I had hope. I hoped that I was wrong about hope.
I’m sharing this because hope is now one of the most important aspects of spiritual solace I have found. I have rediscovered hope, as I promised myself I would do. I have melted the snow.
Perhaps I just have less to risk, since I already received a diagnosis of an “incurable” cancer. Why not stay hopeful?
But hopeful and hope are two different things. Hope is strong and powerful. The etymology of the word reveals it is grounded in expectation and confidence. Hope involves trust. Hope is a virtue and a mighty force.
There is a deep, knowing source of peace that lives inside me, and I call this God. Perhaps you use the same name, God, or perhaps you do not. Perhaps you believe in this force, perhaps you do not. All I can say is, when I am still and silent, this source offers an abundance of love and hope.
Thomas Keating wrote:
“To hope for something better in the future is not the theological virtue of hope. Theological hope is based on God alone, who is both infinitely merciful and infinitely powerful right now…
Father Thomas Keating, Reflections on the Unknowable
He continues in a direction that, at first, seems incongruous with suffering. Yet it vibrates with the power of acceptance – and the power of hope:
Let whatever is happening happen and go on happening. Welcome whatever it is. Let go into the present moment by surrendering to its content…
The divine energies are rushing past us at every nanosecond of time. Why not reach out and catch them by continuing acts of self-surrender and trust in God?”
Father Thomas Keating, Reflections on the Unknowable
Keating connects hope with surrender. He connects hope with welcoming all that is, exactly as it is. That takes a bold expectation of goodness and mercy. For me, that takes faith and trust.
The source of my disillusionment with hope was using a definition that wasn’t big enough. Back then, hope meant hoping for “something better in the future,” and worse, fearing things wouldn’t get better “someday” and I would be disappointed. The scars caused from broken dreams were just the jagged edges of a future that hadn’t unfolded according to my well-written script. Yet I was happy with where I had landed. The twists and turns that followed after an unfulfilled hope always led me to a better place. Wasn’t that just a kick in the pants. So hopes were twisted up in a desire to control an uncontrollable outcome. The definition was too small. And, like nearly every hard thing in life, it led to surrender.
Rediscovering hope has meant letting go of outcomes and trusting in the divine integrity of the moment. Even when it looks and feels awful.
I hope you read and saw hope in my first post, because it is a touchstone that become a mighty foundation for me. I’ve taken an approach to my current situation that is grounded in expectation and confidence, even while I still feel scared. Even then. Hope is that cozy blanket covering my legs, while I sit on a bench, on a porch, watching a fire lazily melting the snow, centered in the perfection of the moment. Hope is the breath that makes all of that happen.