Gritty grace

A version of this op-ed appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer a few weeks ago and in these last few days before the election I thought to share it again. Gaudium et spes means “joys and hopes”, which can be difficult to find when tensions run high, but which I believe are signposts worth following. And please, if you are eligible in this US election - vote! 

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So is it madness to hope — or conceit, or cowardice, or grace?” That is the question Jesuit priest Alfred Delp asked as he sat in a Nazi prison cell in January of 1945 awaiting execution. How could he hope? It seemed illogical to entertain hope, he wrote, yet he could not stop returning to the question.

 As the presidential campaign enters its final weeks many of us are refereeing an internal wrestling match between hope and despair. How can we risk hoping when fear and chaos threaten to engulf us?

St. Paul famously said in a letter to the Corinthians of the virtues faith, hope, and love, that the greatest was love. What he didn’t say is that the hardest of these is hope. Love we can experience, faith we can cling to in the moment, but hope? Hope is always about what is just out of reach, always about a future we cannot predict with certainty, despite all the polls and statistical models.  

It’s not just the election that has me grappling with questions about hope. In July of this year, I sat in a doctor’s office in downtown Philly and listened to her say, “I know this is not the news you hoped to hear.” She went on to tell me I had an incurable and progressive neurodegenerative disease whose course is unpredictable. For now treatment is working, but the future is uncertain. So believe me when I say I know something of the dance between despair and hope.

Five years ago I wrote a book titled Living in Joyful Hope. Like Delp, whose story opens the book, my personal path toward hope — whether about the outcome of the election or my own health — takes its cues from a lifelong Roman Catholic faith and theological training. Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his 2007 encyclical Spe Salvi (Saved in Hope) that “[t]he one who has hope lives differently.”

 To live in hope is to thirst. To thirst for justice, for mercy, for healing, for welcome, for peace. To hope is to build up, not tear apart. St. Augustine wrote that the courage to challenge injustice was a daughter of hope. To live in hope, then, is to stretch my heart wide enough to encompass the needs of my neighbors as my own, to feed the hungry, house the homeless and welcome the refugee. “We are workers,” said St. Oscar Romero, “We are prophets of a future not our own.” 

Fear is the antithesis of hope. Fear seethes and rails. It preaches ruin and destruction, it deafens us to reality. Fear is a failure to see what is possible, a failure to see the worth and dignity of everyone I encounter. Yet fear clings like tar, I confess I cannot easily shake it off.  There is a reason, I suspect, that the phrase “Do not be afraid!” appears again and again in the Gospels. To live in hope is to turn down the volume on the rhetoric that demonizes others and tune in to the voices that call us to companion each other, as Jesus has promised to accompany us.

Gaudium et spes, Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, reminded believers that we have our feet simultaneously planted in two cities, our earthly dwelling and the divine one. The Kingdom of God, then, is not for me a distant dream but part of my present reality. And if joy is the surest sign of the presence of God, then to have a foot in that kingdom is to have access to joy. So I cherish the small joys offered to me — chocolate, the cheerful conductor on the crowded SEPTA train — and strive to offer them in return. (Yes, I absolutely keep chocolate for students and colleagues in my office.) To live in hope is to be mindful of the joy that is here now and for which I believe we are destined in eternity.

So is it madness or conceit or cowardice or grace to hope as we come to vote in this election? Perhaps it is a touch of holy madness. Certainly it takes a gritty grace. It may be conceit or even cowardice, but given the choice between hope and despair, I choose to live in joyful hope. 

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Photo is of fountain in the courtyard outside the apartment I am staying in Vatican City. Hope springs forth.

Hope has feathers -- and talons

Hope, wrote Emily Dickinson, is the thing with feathers. Which feels a bit like something you might cup in your hands,  careful not to ruffle it or outright squash it. Or perhaps not. I saw this description on social media (but haven't been able to track down the source - so if you know, please share!): “People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider’s [sic] webs. It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of the cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go.”

Should hope have feathers, I imagine it as a hummingbird dancing just out of reach, heart beating ferociously. Or maybe she is a red-tailed hawk come screaming out of the sky, her talons out and ready to defend her young. 

I have been thinking a lot about hope lately. The presidential campaign has something to do with that, certainly, but also my kids are at what mathematically I would call critical points -- big changes in direction are coming. Crash Kid is shopping for a house -- on the other side of the Atlantic. Math Guy (formerly known as The Egg) is defending his doctoral dissertation this semester. But mostly I have been thinking about hope because a few weeks ago I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. I know, I buried the lede. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I have not gotten any better at telling people other than to simply say it.

It’s a challenging diagnosis, and a disease with an unpredictable course. I am doing well at the moment, and am mostly hopeful and grateful. Grateful for good medical care, and a treatment plan that has helped my day to day functioning in a way I can only describe as a miracle. Grateful for a physical therapist who suggested a weighted pen that let me write out a grocery list again and scrawl an outline for an essay on a yellow pad of paper. (Bonus, my handwriting is no longer microscopic, which drove my teachers batty back in the day. Which I now totally understand as my eyes have aged.) I am utterly grateful for each day. 

And however illogical it might be, I am hopeful. I contemplate Alfred Delp SJ’s question as he awaited his execution, “So is it madness to hope — or conceit, or cowardice, or grace?” It seemed illogical to entertain hope, he wrote, yet he could not stop returning to the question. Nor can I. It gives me and God something to talk about.

Hope is not fragile, nor is it always gentle. Sometimes it is a bit gritty. But it is always a grace. 

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Read a tangentially related reflection on the Holy Spirit and feral pigeons here.

Trapped in the multi-verse

I am trapped in a writing multi-verse. I am working on a book review due in two weeks. I have read the book (it was great!), made my notes, sketched out the points I want to hit in the review. I know more or less how I want to wrap it up. If only I knew how I wanted to start it. So far I have ten different ways in. It's the opposite of writer's block, but just as painful. I have leaned on Taylor Swift, radioactivity, crafted mother-daughter analogies, evoked rom-com scenes, tread closer to personal grief than one should in this sort of writing. I am no closer to getting that first paragraph out than I was at 10:30 this morning. 

I just. Need. To. Pick. One.

  

Bibliophilic blind dates

 

When I was visiting Crash and his partner in London I paid a visit to House of Books in Crouch End which has a delightful assortment of books to "blind date". Wrapped in brown paper and twine they remind you not to judge a book by its cover. Clues to the content are printed on the wrapping, but no titles or authors. I bought two - both tagged Noir. I was intrigued by the biopunk set in Thailand and what was Tartan Noir going to be? 

I unwrapped the surprises last week while at the beach on vacation. I am halfway through the biopunk novel, which turned out to be The Windup Girl which won both Hugo and Nebula awards in 2010. It's set in a world where global temperatures and sea levels have both risen. Reading it on a steamy summer day at the beach adds to the atmosphere which Paolo Bacigalupi evokes. A world with no ice, no AC, and where generippers try to stay ahead of the plagues.

Tartan noir? It is a mystery by Ambrose Perry!

In Torrents of Light

For a fleeting moment the heavens opened, and God’s glory spilled forth. Time itself gave way, the ancient prophets Moses and Elijah come to converse with Jesus. Hearing this account two millennia later, I feel as if the entirety of the Gospels has collapsed into this one moment in time, fragments of encounters swirling in torrents of light. 

Hovering behind Peter’s wild desire to hold onto the moment, I see Jesus in a garden gently telling Mary Magdalene not to cling to him. Listen to my son, says a voice from a cloud, and I see spit and mud and a deaf man who can suddenly hear and be heard. Ephphatha! Be opened! Rise, says Jesus, and Peter comes to him across the water, a paralyzed man rolls up his mat, and a young girl gets up from her death bed. 

And always, do not be afraid. Resounding over and over. On a storm-wracked sea. To a worried father. To his disciples gathered for one last meal. To the multitudes. To all of us. 

I wonder what the conversation was as Jesus walked Peter, James and John down the mountain. Or perhaps I don’t, for all these Gospel stories end the same way. We want to cling to the God of glory, to fall at the feet of the divine. Instead Jesus reaches for us in the dust and says, get up. Be opened, that you might hear my voice, that you might be my voice. And above all, do not fear. Walk with me and be transfigured. Walk with me and transfigure the world.

From Give Us This Day August 2023