Things Hoped For

For those of us who do not jump into the Christmas season early and often, we began the season of Advent yesterday.  Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent.  I believe that Advent is more important than ever.   The secular Christmas season is well under way in our society.  I haven’t been to a mall recently but I imagine that Christmas carols are being played to encourage people to buy, buy and yes, buy more to honour the child that was born in a stable with a manger for a bed.  It is, all in all, the height of irony that Christmas bacchanalia has the world - at least the Western world in its death grip.  Sorry – I am being rather over the top here.  I promised myself that I wouldn’t indulge in my annual Christmas/Advent rant but I seem to have broken it – and it wasn’t even a New Years resolution.  There will be lots of opportunity to not live up to any New Years resolutions that I might rashly make in about a month’s time.

Back to Advent which is supposed to be the topic of today’s – rant, sorry – reflection.  In both worship services I was part of yesterday, we celebrated the First Sunday of Advent.   We had the ritual of the lighting of the first Advent candle on the Advent Wreath.  Each of the four candles represent a theme, or value, or virtue which we can reflect on during Advent in our preparation for the coming (advent) of the Christ Child.  There can be some variation in the themes but generally they are, Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love.  The order may vary but we lit the first candle representing Hope.  So, let’s turn our attention to Hope.

Hope generally means a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.  We can hope for many different things.  If you reflect on what you may have hoped for in the past or what you hope for today, what things would they be?  I can think of times when I hoped for fame, fortune, happiness and generally the fulfillment of what I happened to desire.  This could vary greatly depending on my circumstances.  However, they were usually focussed on what I thought would fulfill my life.  There was an element of being like the kind of person I admired at that time. 

If I examine what I hope for these days, what comes to mind is things like good health and happiness for me and for my loved ones.  I also think of hope that our leaders will be wise and bring a sensed of right purpose to the decision they make – although at times that seems like a very faint hope.  However, if I turn my thoughts to more spiritual things which does seem appropriate when we consider Advent, there are many possibilities of what we can hope for.  One source noted that in the Bible, hope is the confident expectation of what God has promised and its strength is in His faithfulness. Turning to one of the sources I depend on, Richard Rohr writes:

Hope, it seems to me, is the fruit of a learned capacity to suffer wisely and generously. The ego needs success to thrive; the soul needs only meaning. (Daily Meditation December 3, 2014)

On reflection, much of what I have hoped for in my life have been ego driven.  The ego does not want to have to suffer, even when the suffering will bring us to a better place – which is not true of all suffering.  What doesn’t kill us does not necessarily make us stronger.  But we can (appropriately) hope that we will be able to see that God is with us even, or especially in our suffering.  We can hope for soul work in our lives that will open us more fully to God.  That is something to be devoutly hoped for.

Blessings on your Advent journey.

Is That All There Is?

Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent.  We lit the first Advent candle for Hope.  I am wondering this what exactly is hope?  Is it something that people hang on to when all else fails and there is no other option, or is it an ongoing way of being? 

In our funeral liturgy the Committal includes the reassurance, “in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.”   So, to live in hope is to live ‘as if’.  We may not have absolute proof but we live in the faith that God is with us.

The opposite of hope is despair.  If we are in despair, we have given up hope that there is more to life than we are experiencing at present.  Does this mean that it is a life which is grinding you down physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually?  It certainly can be any or all of those.  But it can also be a life which seems to have just doesn’t have any more meaning. 

What comes to mind is the is the song ‘Is That All There Is’ sung by the great Peggy Lee.  Listening to the song again on You Tube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCRZZC-DH7M). This seems to be a song of despair.  The chorus suggests that life is without meaning and so embrace wine, women and song:

Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is

No, there is not much hope in that approach to life.  However, in the song the singer asks when her lover leaves her, “is that all there is to love?”   She poignantly suggests that she knows what we, the audience, are thinking, if she believes that is all there is to life, why doesn’t she end it?  Peggy replies that she is going to respond, that she is not ready for that final disappointment:

Cause I know just as well as I'm standing here talking to you
And when that final moment comes and I'm breathing my last breath,
I'll be saying to myself
Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is

Perhaps there is some hope in that approach but it doesn’t seem like it is truly hopeful.  The idea of living life to the fullest because that is all there is seem to me to be a cry of despair as there is nothing else but what we have now and there is the eternal question, ‘is that all there is?’ 

The answer to that question is to live in the sure and certain hope that we have meaning in life that there is more to life than just breaking out the booze and having a ball.  As a Christian I find the ultimate meaning in the eternal presence of Jesus Christ as my Saviour and in the sure and certain hope of new life.  However, I believe that many people can and do find other sources of meaning.  The meaning comes from living in the knowledge that you are not the only thing that matters; in the knowledge that you are not the centre of the universe.  We have the sure and certain hope that we are all more than that and can live in ways that embrace life beyond breaking out the booze and having a ball.   No, that is not all there is. 

Blessings on that journey which we are all taking; the journey of life.