This Spring, Hope
My Dear People,
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
- Emily Dickenson
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We never give up hope. We have no right to do so, for hope is not ours to give up.
Hope is not of us. It is a gift from beyond us. It has flown to us. Like a bird. Like an angel.
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We never give up hope on someone else. Again, it's not ours to give up.
True, it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks. But it's not impossible; and, furthermore, we're not dogs.
Nor do we ever give up hope for ourselves.
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Nothing that we or the world at large can present in the face of hope is
unprecedented. ("There is nothing new under the sun," as Ecclesiastes
puts it.)
Hope has met and overcome it all before; and will again.
And let us never confuse hope with optimism, which is a matter of mere human will, versus hope, which is born of the will and power of the Almighty. Optimism is fickle, ephemeral, and dependent on such things as what we had for breakfast; while hope is immovable and eternal.
Optimism is to hope, as happiness is to joy. Optimism is to hope, as tin is to steel. Better still, if optimism is like tin, then hope is like magma.
Like magma, at the center of everything that is; deeper than anything that is; able to overcome and move beyond anything in its way.
Hope is, at bottom, a trust that we have a future in God, a future that cannot be taken from us; a future that God is preparing for us, and for the world. As the prophet Jeremiah reports, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD... to give you a future and a hope."
This day, and this spring season, may you and may we all be filled with green-growing hope, as green and as lush as the world around us; hope for yourself, for our parish, for our city, and for our world; for God himself has great hope for us and in us; and, through us, God is working to bring about that hope even now, right here on Grace Street. Onward and upward we go; with hope, and with trust in God, leaning into the new day that God is preparing for us, my sisters and brothers.
Out into the sunlight we go!
Your brother in Christ,
Wallace+
Pictured: One of ten memorial windows by Tiffany at St.
Paul’s. The subject is a single figure, the Angel of Hope, seen
floating in an aspiring pose amid puffy clouds. The Angel of Hope
represents a theological virtue, not an expectation oF worldly reward
through divine intervention. Hope’s immediate object is God, the supreme
expression of supernatural good. Hope, along with faith and charity,
are the essential Christian verities. The Angel of Hope, while not
Biblically referenced, has for centuries been a personification of the
virtue of hope, an icon for those seeking divine grace and guidance.
(Calder Loth) Photo by Cyane Lowden
Tiffany: Color & Light opens at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts on
Saturday, May 29. Read more about Tiffany at St. Paul’s and joining the
tour guide ministry at www.stpauls-episcopal.org/tiffany.
