Compelled by Hope

A theology of light versus the dark is prolific across both monotheistic and polytheistic religions and traditions — Yin and Yang, Hades and Persephone, Amaterasu and Susanoo, Lucifer and God, Ra and Apep. Humans have always known the paradoxical nature of life and tried to discover meaning within it. Cosmologies, folklore, and religions have emerged as our way of understanding what is good and evil, light and dark. Understanding is at the heart of our human search, but changing our relationship to it is the primary task of grateful hope.  

The Benedictine nun Sister Joan Chittister, writes, “Darkness deserves gratitude. It’s the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.” In other words, the darkness is not just a black hole that swallows the light of bright stars but is fertile ground for what comes next. In fact, this shift in perspective can nurture an understanding that communities and individuals, systems and situations, and that which is darkness, can be redeemed. From the Latin, redimere, it means to “buy or take back.”  In other words, that which seems lost can be taken back. Not returned, but taken back. How is this so? With a heart of hope.

While some cosmologies may cause us to look towards a destination beyond life as an escape from the present situation, a grateful hope invites us to respond to and directly engage the life that has been given.

Acknowledging that growth is born in adversity or other unexpected places is not a re-packaging of objectively bad things or false illusion that all can be made well. Instead it is the opportunity to change our response to the past, present, and future through active engagement. While some cosmologies may cause us to look towards a destination beyond life as an escape from the present situation, a grateful hope invites us to respond to and directly engage the life that has been given. This perspective is distinctly not something out there, but right here — engageable even if not resolvable. We can take back rather than flee because we know what we are passionately working towards.

This is, in part, because a grateful hope shows us that life is not pure darkness through which no light can ever penetrate. When everything appears to be crumbling, we are invited to go deeper even when all the “exit signs” are lit to show us a way out. Our trust — hopefulness — makes it possible for us to engage life in its messy fullness. This is because grateful hope shows us that there is something in that mess worth discovering. Here, we disrupt the stories we’ve been told and the stories we tell ourselves about the world. We arrive without binary thinking but with a deep observation that will consequently invite action.

When we show up, there is often an individual and collective reward for such passionate engagement: progress. 

In this arrival, grateful hope asks us to engage life in its totality and with our alertness to name what is dark: Xenophobia, environmental exploitation, child abuse, racism, transphobia, misogyny, homophobia, greed, disenfranchisement, and all those shadows that are cast upon our hope. We can name what requires action by encountering it rather than remaining hidden from it with optimism or fear. When we show up, there is often an individual and collective reward for such passionate engagement: progress. 

But, as Buddhist monk and teacher Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche writes, “It’s easy to love the world when everything is going well. The real challenge is to love the world when everything is falling apart.”  While we do not wish for the world or our lives to crumble, when challenges arise we can put the cultivation of our hope to work and arrive at individual and collective pressure points with endurance because we know what we are working towards. 

That means that the alleluia point where darkness returns to light is the moment — whether it arrives silently and unobserved or through a thunderous, collective action — when what seemed irredeemable, lost, and unsurpassable becomes our growth. This growth is ultimately something we would not know if we had not encountered the darkness and discovered what to redeem. Here, we recognize the courage that anchors our grateful hope and what it compels us to do.

Photo by Mahdi Dastmard