We were made for these times

Catholic New Times, Dec 14, 2003 by Veronica Dunne

Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so beinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you ... to please not spend your spirit by bewailing these difficult times.

Especially do not lose hope.

--Clarissa Pinkola Estes: "Letter To A Young Activist"

By nature, I am an optimistic person.

Through no effort of my own, I am inclined to see a half full rather than a halfempty glass. However, life has also taught me that there are seasons when optimism is not enough. In the soul-searing moments when ordered worlds collapse and certitudes crumble, when loved ones die, when the tragic enormity of events seem impervious to change by personal and collective efforts, when the pain of living is like having skin torn away from flesh, I need a greater strength than optimism can provide.

So much in our culture would have us numb this pain, distract us from the depths of our feelings. In fact, some authors, like Ann Wilson Schaef, conclude that a structurally hierarchical, controlling, violent, consumer culture such as ours NEEDS the numbing effect of addictions (drugs, shopping, religion, work etc.) to keep functioning.

Witness how we were urged, after the toppling of the twin towers, to shop as a way of averting societal disaster and foiling the terrorists. Such superficial responses to profound tragedy simply deepen our experience of desperation. For middle-class Canadians, the temptation to despair can take a particular form. As ethicist Sharon Welch notes, it is a despair "cushioned by privilege and grounded in privilege. It is easier to give up on long-term social change when one is comfortable in the present. When the good life is present or within reach, it is tempting to despair of its ever being in reach for others and resort merely to enjoying it for oneself and one's family" (A Feminist Ethic of Risk).

I confess that there are days and weeks when I experience the temptation Welch points to.

I want to give up the long struggle for justice in the world and in the church, and cushion myself from feeling the pain. While state wars, economic corruption, ecological devastation and political and religious posturing are not new phenomena, our heightened awareness of them is new.

In a world of 24-hour newscasts, it can seem that disaster is taking place everywhere, all the time. It is difficult to continue the struggle for justice when problems are seen in their full magnitude. At the same time, not to continue condemns us to a nether world such as Kahlil Gibran describes, where "You shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears." Being faithful to the struggle, despite enormous odds, is a fierce cry for freedom, and another word for hope.

The Latin word for hope, sperare, comes from an Indo-European root spei, meaning to expand. To be hopeful is to feel expansive, to find some breathing room, to have a larger horizon from which to consider events. To be despairing is to feel constrained, suffocated, to fear that the well-springs of life are drying up.

Hope is an experience of transformative power that breaks through in the midst of our fears and limitations. The point of impasse and utter disillusionment can become a moment of profound turning where everything previously held as true becomes subject to review, and a new basis for living life expansively, in freedom and in truth, emerges. From this new basis, I am able to initiate the process of disavowing the beliefs and values that keep systems of oppression intact, and to move towards creating an alternative world based on different values. The ways of suffering disorient and baffle, yet it is precisely in these moments of seeming powerlessness and despair that hope is born.

While none of us can control or manufacture the gift of hope, there are some spiritual practices we can engage in that prepare us for in that prepare in that prepare us for its its springing forth. Advent is a good time to embark on such practices or re-commit to them.

When the northern world is at its darkest and coldest, we enter the season of Advent-Christmas in trust that "now is the time; today is the day of salvation," that "we were made for these times" and that the ultimate meaning of our personal and communal lives is situated within Holy Mystery. In Advent, we gather together, to "wait in joyful hope for the coming of our saviour Jesus Christ." We tell stories of God, of ourselves, and of those "friends of God and prophets" who have gone before us. We fiercely proclaim our faith in God-made-flesh, and our participation in Incarnation.

Engaging the struggle with others

Of the many spiritual practices open to persons of faith, I would like to highlight three. First is a commitment to community. Part of the power of despair is that it pushes us into isolation where we shut down, feel helpless, and give way to cynicism. In the grip of this kind of profound distress, when I most need a friend's presence, I am most inclined to cut myself off. Spiritual practice is to resist the cut-off, call the friend, go to the meeting.