{"id":3230,"date":"2024-04-08T06:06:16","date_gmt":"2024-04-08T13:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionmatters\/?p=3230"},"modified":"2024-04-08T06:59:48","modified_gmt":"2024-04-08T13:59:48","slug":"hope-of-renewal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionmatters\/2024\/04\/hope-of-renewal\/","title":{"rendered":"Living in Hope of Renewal: On Arendt and Easter Season"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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{Photo by Ekaterina Weber for Scopio; hope of renewal}<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.\u201d <\/em>\u2015 Barbara Kingsolver<\/p>\n

In 2017 after Trump became president, I started reading Hannah Arendt\u2019s The Origins of Totalitarianism<\/em>. The book felt chillingly heartbreakingly shatteringly timely. At the moment, many viewed parallels between Trump\u2019s ascendance and historical ascensions of authoritarianism as overblown and alarmist. Today, the story is different. Now I frequently encounter discussions of Arendt in the mainstream; people raising the prospect that she is a voice for this moment as we are poised to potentially lose touch with democracy.<\/p>\n

We see a veering toward autocracy interwoven with many trends that are by now so familiar they hardly need repeating\u2014all culminating in an insurrection on our capitol and a recasting of the insurrectionists as victims and hostages. It has become so banal, to use Arendt\u2019s now-famous adjective<\/p>\n

These days, I feel as concerned as ever. More concerned than when I picked up Arendt\u2019s book in 2017. But I\u2019ve also been pondering the subject of hope<\/em>. What does it mean to have hope? I come from a tradition that expresses hope\u2014even when terrible things are quite clearly about to happen.<\/p>\n

At times we\u2019re in positions of knowing things trend in a bad direction. Maybe someone we love is sick, or our child has lost a job and is struggling, or someone we know is imprisoned in addiction, or things trend tragic for some other reason. At times the road ahead looks bumpy indeed. What does it mean to have hope when things are not headed in a good direction?<\/p>\n

Despite all of the worrying trends, I do have long-term hope. I don\u2019t have hope in the sense of optimistically thinking everything will simply \u201cwork out\u201d and near-term bad outcomes will dissipate, and\/or God will intervene to save us from ourselves. Because this created universe includes choice and the playing out of natural laws; of \u201ccauses and conditions,\u201d as Buddhists quite helpfully state. We clearly do not have a God that swoops in and takes over our wills, forcing us to do the right thing. And clearly God does not swoop in and override natural laws and natural cycles. Instead, we know a Divinity that for all the talk about sovereignty, has opted for a freedom-giving path that is quite vulnerable.<\/p>\n

And yet. I do look around and look back at history and see a trend toward redemption. We may progress three steps forward and two steps back. But something is ultimately moving us in the direction of greater consciousness and openness to others. One only need glance at the common brutality of \u00a0the Middle Ages to see we have moved forward\u2014or even at far-more-widely-held and entrenched prejudices in the middle of the 20th century.<\/p>\n

In the Episcopal tradition, we are in the season of Easter. This season reminds us that even though Good Fridays come, and really cannot be avoided (not because God is violent, but because people are), the story doesn\u2019t end there. Easter is still to come. That is the symbol and hope we enact liturgically. We strive to get to know a God who takes things we destroy and brings them back to life. In this sense, Easter is an image of something we see all the time.<\/p>\n

{Photo by Travel Life for Scopio; hope of renewal}<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A Redemptive Flow<\/strong><\/p>\n

My favorite image of God is as flow<\/em>, like a mighty flowing river, a river ever moving toward repair, toward fixing the things we creatures break. Sometimes the redemption takes a while, and sometimes things get caught or are resistant to the flow. But God is ever righting things. I know this can sound glib or clich\u00e9. Yet it is something I\u2019ve seen play out in my life and the lives of those close to me over and over. So if the most reliable evidence is experience, this trend toward wholeness, this redemptive flow<\/em>, is the most reliable thing I know. And we don\u2019t sit back and pray and expect God to act supernaturally; we participate in redemption<\/em>. We pray less with our words and more with our limbs. Or we pray with words not to manipulate God, but to connect with God and change our own hearts.<\/p>\n

This is where I find hope. Not in a na\u00efve idea that things cannot and will not possibly go wrong. Things go wrong all the time. But then there is the long view\u2014this view that even what we break is, over time, repaired. Our creator is a mighty river of love. This is what it means to trust and have hope grounded in that trust.<\/p>\n

What does this mean with regard to our democracy? It means that if we are participants with God, we do what we individually can to protect it, each of us following our individual gifts and leadings. It also means that even if oppression and autocracy win in certain places in the short-term, we hold out hope that ultimately, they fail.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Wren, winner of a 2022 Independent Publishers Award Bronze Medal<\/a><\/p>\n

Winner of the 2022 Independent Publisher Awards Bronze Medal for Regional Fiction; Finalist for the 2022 National Indie Excellence Awards.\u00a0<\/em>(2021) Paperback publication of\u00a0Wren<\/a>\u00a0,\u00a0<\/em>a novel. \u201cInsightful novel tackles questions of parenthood, marriage, and friendship with finesse and empathy \u2026 with striking descriptions of Oregon topography.\u201d \u2014Kirkus Reviews\u00a0<\/em>(2018) Audiobook publication of\u00a0Wren<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.\u201d \u2015 Barbara Kingsolver In 2017 after Trump became president, I started reading Hannah Arendt\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4674,"featured_media":3233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1145,801,1142,24,615,63],"class_list":["post-3230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","tag-barbara-kingsolver","tag-easter","tag-hannah-arendt","tag-hope","tag-joy","tag-resurrection"],"yoast_head":"\nHope of Renewal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hope of renewal means that even if oppression and autocracy win in certain places in the short-term, we hold out hope that finally they fail.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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