I have been sitting with the word hope for the last couple of weeks and I have surprised myself by wondering whether hope is always a good thing.
That may sound like an odd place to begin especially for a person labelled an unrealistic optimist!
We are usually encouraged to have hope. Hope is something we are told to hold onto when things are difficult. We hope for healing, for reconciliation, for a new relationship or job, a different world, or simply for things to get better. There is nothing inherently wrong with hoping for something. Of course there isn't. Hope can carry us through difficult times. In many ways hope is like the big red button we get to push when it seems like we just can’t handle what looks like the worst thing we could imagine is going to happen. Hope gives us something to look toward.
But I have been wondering about that. So many of our conversations here have been about being present…present to joy, present to peace, present to what matters. What happens when hope takes us out of the present and pushes us towards a future hoped for outcome?
I have started to wonder if there is another way to understand hope. Not to question whether we should hope, but what we are doing with our hope.
A future outcome-based hope might say I hope this particular thing happens.
Another kind of hope, let’s call it Open hope, might say I don't know what will happen, but I remain open to what is possible.
That kind of hope doesn't necessarily pull us away from the present. It may actually make us more attentive to it. Open hope doesn't require me to know how the story ends. It simply keeps the door open and allows me to be present…present to an idea that arrives when I wasn't looking for it or present to the possibility I couldn't have imagined from where I was standing yesterday.
Open Hope can be the willingness to be fully present to this moment because we trust that this moment may contain something we cannot yet see. A future outcome we don’t even know exists.
And that creates a really interesting relationship with faith. Sometimes people put faith and hope together as two similar things but I wonder if they are partners in a way. I wonder if faith might be what allows us to loosen our grip on the outcome of hope. Hope says, I want something to happen. Faith might say, I don't know what will happen, but I trust enough to be present to what is. This tension between faith and hope feels like it could give us a beautiful spiritual exploration today.
How is this sitting with everyone?
Faith and hope are often spoken about as though they are the same thing, but I don't think they are. I think they act in partnership. And I am not talking about Faith as a particular doctrine or religious belief. My definition of faith might simply be trust in something larger than our ability to know or control. In fact my own personal journey with faith comes from looking back on my life and seeing how things have evolved in ways I could have never hoped for or wished for and yet were absolutely for the best.
Ultimately it could be faith that allows us to loosen our grip on the outcome of our hope.
And that thought takes me back to my reflection last month on surrender and the idea that faith is the bridge between the two. Surrender says, “I don't have to control this.” Hope says, “I release my need to know where the path is going?” Faith says, “I can trust enough to be here, even without knowing what comes next.”
And perhaps this is where hope becomes a spiritual practice, not an escape into the future, but a way of staying awake to the present…where hope doesn’t give us certainty that things will turn out a particular way, but openness to the possibility that something is unfolding that we cannot yet see.
So maybe the question I am really sitting with is this: Can hope become a practice of presence rather than a focus into the future?
I don't know that I have an answer. And in fact as I write this reflection I would say that my head is kind of swirling as I try and wrap my head around this. I wonder if hope doesn't so much need to tell us what the future will hold, something that we are clenching onto, but perhaps it only needs to keep us open and expanded enough to meet it…to be hopeful.
May we have the courage to hope without needing to know the outcome.
May we have the faith to remain present when the path ahead is unclear.
May we release our need to know where the path is taking us, while remaining open to where it might lead.
And may we discover that sometimes hope isn't found in looking toward tomorrow, but in becoming fully awake to today.
May it be so.