Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
“If people are just going to keep doing that, I wish I’d never been born.”

“If people are just going to keep doing that, I wish I’d never been born.”

Last updated on: October 25, 2020 at 6:00 am by Vance Morgan

“If people are just going to keep doing that, I wish I’d never been born.” 2020-10-23T19:12:49-04:00 Vance Morgan

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

We’ve all done this, we bang and bang on the door of hope, and don’t anyone dare suggest there’s nobody home. Barbara Kingsolver

I recently finished reading Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel, Unsheltered. One of the first full-length, fictional treatments of what it’s been like to live in the cognitive and social dissonance that has accompanied the rise and presidency of Donald Trump, it is not one of my favorites of her many novels (The Poisonwood Bible remains my favorite). Unsheltered is populated with characters who are less than fully fleshed out, who seem to be collections of various talking-points rather than real people, and whose conversation sounds more like an MSNBC or Fox “roundtable” discussion than anything we might hear normal human beings conversing about. Every stereotype is represented from all parts of the political spectrum—each reader will find herself or himself in one or more of the characters. My guess is that Kingsolver wrote the novel in anger and frustration—something that many of us can relate to these days.

In one of those odd synchronicities that I long ago stopped trying to explain and started just accepting, my friend Mitch, who is the priest-in-charge at the Episcopal church I attend, happened to mention Barbara Kingsolver in his homily the Sunday after I finished Unsheltered. But Mitch wasn’t referencing the novel—he hasn’t read it. He ended his sermon with some thoughts and a brief passage from “Small Wonder,” the first essay in a collection of Kingsolver essays of the same title that was published almost two decades ago, just a few months after 9/11. I read the collection a number of years ago and had entirely forgotten about it. Mitch’s mention of it reminded me that I have often thought that Kingsolver is a better essayist than novelist. “Worth taking another look,” I thought, as I pulled Small Wonder off the shelf when I returned home from church.

The next morning, I read the opening essay that Mitch had quoted from the day before. The real theme of the essay is “now what?” It’s a question that’s been on the minds of many over the past several years, but in Kingsolver’s 2002 essay, the question is asked in the context of 9/11 and of America’s subsequent invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Kingsolver writes:

The closest my heart has come to breaking lately was on the day my little girl arrived home from school and ran to me, her face tense with expectation, asking, “Are they still having that war in Afghanistan?”

As if the world were such a place that in one afternoon, while kindergartners were working hard to master the letter L, it would decide to lay down its arms. I tried to keep the tears out of my eyes. I told her I was sorry, yes, they were still having the war.

She said, “If people are just going to keep doing that, I wish I’d never been born.”

I can imagine a young child these days, returning from an “active shooter” drill at her kindergarten, while also wearing a mask and being reminded to socially distance, saying the same thing. A person I love once said “Life is overrated,” and meant it. There are times when that doesn’t seem like an overstatement.

And yet somehow, we plow on. As Kingsolver writes, “We bang and bang on the door of hope, and don’t anyone dare suggest there’s nobody home.” Human beings are incapable of living without hope. If there isn’t any to be found, we manufacture it. We choose to interpret what happens and doesn’t happen in ways that point toward a glimmer of something better and worth searching for. And sometimes we describe the process in words that include the divine.

God is in the details, the completely unnecessary miracles sometimes tossed up as stars to guide us. They are the promise of good fortune in a cloudless day, and the animals in clouds; look hard enough, and you’ll see them. Don’t ask if they’re real.

I’ve written more than once on this blog about the power of hope by using a text from an unlikely source in the Hebrew scriptures. In “Lamentations,” one of the darkest of all texts in all of scripture, we find this:

I will call this to mind, as my reason to hope:

The favors of the Lord are not exhausted, his mercies are not spent;

They are renewed each morning, so great is his faithfulness.

My portion is the Lord, therefore will I hope in him.

In a month, the liturgical calendar will turn to Advent, my favorite liturgical season. Advent’s strongest image is pregnancy. Elizabeth’s . . . Mary’s . . . so unexpected, so miraculous. A distant, long-promised hope is about to literally be fleshed out. When we turn our attention away from our obsession with the mess of our daily lives and the human condition toward distant promise, we choose to believe that when the divine takes on our human suffering and pain, we in turn take on divinity itself. The choice to look outward in expectation is within our power, as described in this passage from Baruch:

Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God. Put on the robe of the righteousness that comes from God; put on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting; for God will show your splendor everywhere under heaven. For God will give you evermore the name, “Righteous Peace, Godly Glory.”

The phrase “It’s always darkest just before the dawn” is usually little more than a platitude, but in this case, it makes sense. We have reason to hope, because help is on the way. We just need to learn where to find it.

Previous Post

October 22, 2020

"Political Jesus": Yes, those words belong together

Next Post

October 27, 2020 Let's Get Real: Absolutely Everthing is at Stake One Week from Today

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abortion Advent AI Angels Artificial intelligence atheism attention baptism Baptists beauty belief Benedictines Bible bicycling Big Bird books Bovina Camaldoli hermitage Canada Catholicism cats certainty change Christianity Christmas Collegeville Covid-19 creativity Development of Western Civilization dogs doubt Easter Enneagram Epiphany Episcopal ethics Eucharist evil extroverts Facebook faith family fear flowers forgiveness freedom friends God goodness grace happiness heaven hell history Holy Spirit Holy Week hope human nature humility humor idolatry incarnation introverts irreverence Islam Jeanne Jesus Joe Biden joy Judaism justice Kamala Harris knowledge Lent listen literature liturgy love Marsue Memorial Day miracles movies music mystery mythology NPR Old Testament optimism paradox peace Penguins philosophy piano podcast politics power prayer Protestantism Providence College Religion Rhode Island sabbatical sacrament science seeing silence Simone Weil Socrates soul sports St. John's College stories suffering tattoo teaching technology television theology thinking time tolerance transcendence travel trees trust truth Uncategorized Vermont wisdom wonder writing

Select a Month May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz