Hope in the Age of Monsters

On Saturday, Lorna and our guests and I attended the Charlie Angus Resistance Tour event in Charlottetown, PEI.  It was a sold-out event in which we were given an inspiring talk by Charlie Angus who is a former long time NDP member of parliament.  It covered a lot of ground about the challenges we are facing in the world today with the rise of totalitarianism from leaders such as Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, and Orban. 

There were two of the many things in the presentation which really stayed with me.  One was his classification of our times as being the Age of Monsters.  This may seem to be somewhat hyperbolic. However, if you are paying attention to what is happening in such places as Ukraine and Gaza and the United States – to name a few – I certainly believe this is an accurate naming of the evil that is rising.  Indeed, I think of the closing lines of the poem by W.B Yates, the Second Coming:

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The other part of Charlie’s talk that stuck with me was addressing what we can do in response to this threat from the rough beasts that are slouching towards our Bethlehems.  He noted a study that had been done on the resistance to the Nazis in a town in the Netherlands in which residents were most likely to hide Jewish fellow citizens despite the threat of death to themselves from the Nazis.  The study of this phenomenon concluded that it was because of social pressure – people were asked and encouraged by their neighbours to do these heroic acts. 

In this context, Charlie also spoke about what, I believe, he called the theory of zero, ones and twos.  AS he described it -at least as I remember it – it begins with zero which is the start of any movement by one person’s action.  This in term is acted on by two, which then becomes four – and so one.  In this way one person can make a difference.  It also doesn’t require big, momentous acts.  The small, seemingly insignificant act can have unimagined impacts moving out like the ripples when a stone is thrown into a pond. 

As Charlie states he is not optimistic, but he certainly is hopeful.   It is vital we do not give up hope.  

  

Both Hope and Despair

Just after I finished posting my last edition of this blog on the subject of Hope and Despair, Lorna and I had a living example of just that – we had a an experience of both hope and despair.  Our cat Trixie (although she is much more Lorna’s cat) who is an indoor branch of the feline species, took the opportunity to explore the great outdoors.  Now I’m not completely convinced that this is an example of synchronicity, I think it is a candidate for this phenomenon.  Here is Lorna’s description of the event as recorded on Facebook: 

I was gardening and I didn't realize the door hadn't latched. Trixie likes to watch me out the window when I am in the yard. When she noticed the door was slightly open, she decided to explore a bit. I had just finished my work and turned to see a large orange and black cat scoot under the back porch. I was wearing my outside (baseball) hat, which scares her for some reason.

 

I thought it can't be Trixie; Trixie's not that big. Then I saw the open door.

She next ran out from under the back porch - Greg caught a glimpse-and likely went from there under the deck. Ater a few minutes of calling her then googling about indoor cats escaping outdoors, I tramped around the forsythia bush as suggested but I frightened her. She startled me by darting out from under it. She disappeared before I could see where she went

 

Anyhow, we left both doors open and put out treats and familiar smelling things like her litter box and blanket. I had an email from my daughter to distract me.

 

So, just as I got to the point in the email where I was telling her how unnerving it was, and how worried I was and what if she didn't come back, and wasn't it lucky she'd been chipped when I heard a small "meep," so I looked over my shoulder. Greg had just seen her in the bedroom, so he quietly closed the back door, and motioned me to close the front door. She must have walked right behind me without my noticing. Anyhow I tiptoed over and closed the door.

 

She came back about an hour after she got out. So, I have Joanna to thank because I decided to reply to her, and thus let Trixie come in on her own !!!

 

This is a great example of how hope and despair can be experienced in the same event.  The reaction by both Lorna and me swung between both ends of what I can describe as the hope and despair axis – despair that we will never see Trixie and again and we will never have another cat to the hope she will return if we do what Google advises. 

 I hope that any times of despair will be accompanied with hope on your journey. 

 

Hope and Despair

I recently listened to an episode of On Being with host Krista Tippett, which asked the questions: What is filling you with despair? And what is giving you hope?  These are very good questions for these times.  So, I would like to pose those questions to the readers of this blog, what is filling you with despair? And what is giving you hope?

Before you consider these questions, let me clarify what I mean by the terms hope and despair.  Generally, despair is defined as being without hope.  However, this is not all that helpful until we define hope.  I believe it is better, for our purposes, to define this as being resigned to the inevitable; to have no possibility (hope) that the current situation will not improve and will lead to the end that is in front of us and there is no possibility that something will intervene to prevent that from happening.

Turning to hope, it is often the case that hope is used synonymously with optimism.  I can be optimistic that some situation or event will turn out okay in the end regardless – regardless of what?  There is nothing that is required of you to bring about the outcome you are wanting.  Hope, on the other hand, is to my mind, the possibility that things will turn out for the best if forces are brought to bear on that issue and work to bring about the desired outcome.

That force is sometimes – perhaps even often – a divine one which will bring about the best of all possible worlds or at least the best of possible outcome in this case.  This is best expressed by the saying of Julian of Norwich, the 14th century English mystic, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."   However, in hope there is also the possibility thahopt the forces will be based here on earth comprised of people working to achieve the desired ends.  Sometimes these forces combine as in the Social Gospel movement to bring about the Kingdom of God which will encompass the ends that are hoped for.  This can be considered faith in action.

It is easy to despair these days with the wildfires raging across many parts of Western Canada, and warfare raging in Ukraine, and the slow-motion destruction of the Palestinian people in Gaza.  However, we must not give up hope and let despair win. 

So, I will leave you with the questions I began with: What is filling you with despair? And what is giving you hope?  

  

Hope Shall Come Again

 For those who celebrate the season of Advent, you will know that last Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent.  We began the preparation for Christmas and the coming of the Christ child and all that entails, by lighting the first candle on the advent wreath.  Advent is also the celebration of the hope for the second coming of Jesus Christ the King.

The lighting of the Advent Candle is one of the ways which we can observe the season and not jump right into the celebration of Christmas which seems to be earlier every year.  There is also the tradition of the Advent Calendar which count down the days until the wonderful event when the baby Jesus arrives in the stable and is placed in a lowly manger in that small insignificant town in an insignificant country occupied by the most powerful country in the world. 

Lorna and I participated yesterday in another wonderful Advent tradition and a tuned into the service of Advent Lessons and Carols at St. Thomas’s Anglican Church in Toronto.  This lived up to our high expectations under difficult circumstances with only a quartet rather than a full choir and liturgist who acquitted themselves admirably. 

The advent wreath is comprised of four candles, one for each of the four Sundays in Advent. Each candle represents a symbol of what is represented by the coming of the Christ Child; Hope, Peace, Joy and Love.  Sunday, we lit the candle representing Hope.  We livein a world that has always need of hope; this year more so than ever. Reflecting on hope, I am reminded of the Greek myth of Pandora’s box.  Here is a summary from an on-line source as a reminder of the myth:

Pandora was the first mortal woman in Greek mythology, a sort of an Ancient Greek Eve. Following the instructions of Zeus – who wanted to punish Prometheus for stealing the fire from the gods and giving it to the humans – she was molded by Hephaestus and endowed with gifts by all the other Olympian gods. One of these gifts was a jar full of all the evils and diseases which exist in the world. One day – out of curiosity and not out of malice – Pandora lifted the lid of the jar, thus instantaneously releasing all evils and diseases into the world. Shocked by what had happened, she quickly tried to put the lid back, managing to merely trap Hope inside it. That is why Hope is the last thing that dies in man: even though deceitful from time to time, it is the only consolation humans have for all the troubles Pandora let loose on the world. The event of their release marks the end of the trouble-free Golden Age of Man, and the beginning of the Silver Age, the second of the five Ages of Man. https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Mortals/Pandora/pandora.html

Hope, it seems, has been around for a very long time.  It was not invented by Christians but was recognized as one of those characteristics essential to human nature and encapsulates what is possible in for humanity as we look to a world in which God’s kingdom will be established here in this world in the second coming.  That hope is made manifest by the birth of the Christ Child – not in a castle as the prince of a world-ruling empire but of a very different kingdom based on love.

In your journey to what will be a very different Christmas for many of us, be assured that we have the Hope of a world which is different than what we have now – a world beyond COVID isolation.

Blessings on your Advent journey in preparation for the coming of the Prince of Peace.

P.S. Thanks to Lorna for the reminder that Advent is also about the second coming. 

 

Peace on Earth

Last week I began the Advent Journey - Advent is a time of preparation for the advent of the birth of the Christ Child.  It is a season of the church year which, regrettably is trampled in the rush to begin the celebration of Christmas and the material expression of what is actually a celebration of Bacchanalia in our culture with the extravagance of gift buying and giving and receiving.

The idea of giving at Christmas is, in and of itself, a positive thing.  I am sure that charitable giving increases at this time of year as people open their hearts and wallets to give to good causes.  However, if we ignore a time of preparation, we are missing what is actually central to the celebration of Christmas.   We desire the instant gratification of all the good stuff about Christmas such as beginning as soon as possible to play the beautiful Christmas music which should not actually be sung until Christmas Eve and the beginning or the real Christmas season.  This, of course, would be impossible and even Churches surrender to the inevitability of beginning the bedecking of the halls early in the Advent Season.  However, many churches still celebrate Advent with the hope that we Christians will observe a Holy Advent in preparation for the birth of the Christ Child.

The observance of the four themes of Advent is a wonderful way to actually prepare for Christmas.  The four themes of Hope, Peace, Joy and Love are marked with the lighting of a candle in the Advent Wreath.  They are cumulative so that we do not forget the theme me marked in the previous week(s) and are able to build on what has gone before. 

Last week we lit the candle for Hope and this week we lit that candle again and also lit the candle for Peace.  The theme of peace is, of course, an easily recognized theme for Christmas.  With the Christ Child being considered the Prince of Peace, as proclaimed in the chorus from Handel’s Messiah, which I will be part of a performance later this week (yes, I know, before Christmas):

For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

Well, if Jesus is the Prince of Peace, peace certainly hasn’t arrived yet.  But what would it look like if there was peace of earth as was announced by the angels to the shepherds?  Peace is not just a cessation of violence.  If all wars ceased would that mean that there was peace of earth and goodwill to all people?  Actually, no.   True peace is much more than that.  It involves justice where the proverbial lions would lie down with the lambs and all people would be treated as they truly are – children of God.  Poverty would be overcome and racism, hate and violence would end.  That is truly something to hope for.

During this Advent let us especially peace and work for a world where true peace will overcome hatred and fear.  Blessings on your Advent journey.

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.

Reading the Bible 11 Gen 21: 1-21 God's Sense of Holy Humour

There is much that has been said and more written about the birth of Isaac and the resulting quasi-nuclear family of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael.  For me in this reading two things stick out.  First, God fulfils his promises and second, God opens our eyes.

Through the birth of Isaac God fulfils his covenant with Abraham and with the rescue of Ishmael his promise to Hagar.  Both of these promises are fulfilled in rather unusual ways.  The promise to Abraham was delayed until Abraham was 100 years old.  We are not told how old Sarah is which you might think was more important as she was the one who conceived and gave birth.  However, it is one – the first – of many stories in the bible of God acting in the lives of people when they might have given up hope.  As we have just passed Candlemas, Simeon and Anna come to mind. 

It looked rather hopeless for God promise to Hagar.  She was thrown out into the wilderness with almost nothing after Abraham listened to God.  This seemingly rash act turned out for the best – apparently according to God’s plan - because he opened Hagar’s eyes and enabled her to see what was right in front of her – a well of water. 

In all this I wonder what God has in mind for me.  In terms of age I have more in common with Abraham than Isaac.  It is comforting as well as a bit disconcerting to believe that God has lots left for me to do in my life.  I certainly know that as my wife Lorna points out occasionally I don’t always have eyes to see what is in front of my nose.  Perhaps God will give me eyes to see what he has in mind for the next part of life.  Perhaps the best is yet to come.  Perhaps this is just God's sense of Holy Humour shining through and we can laugh with Sarah.