I have always admired Rev. Andrea Ayvazian’s passionate activism and wise leadership since the days we worked together as campus chaplains at Mount Holyoke College.
So I was delighted to open Saturday’s Gazette and find her very thoughtful and incredibly timely column on hope. I too have been thinking a lot about hope, as we live in a time when many of the gains and rights we have worked hard for, over many decades, are being rolled back and reversed. For many of us, these past weeks have been extremely painful and disturbing, as we witness Georgia, Alabama and Missouri passing near total abortion bans and see increasingly ominous efforts to erode and ultimately overturn Roe v. Wade.
I was inspired by some of the wonderful quotes Rev. Ayvazian included in her piece, especially the teachings of Margaret Wheatley and Thomas Merton who both agreed that “it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”
As a Jew, I have also held close the words of the Chasidic master Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, who taught, “The whole world is but a narrow bridge … but the main thing is not to be afraid.”
But Rev. Ayvazian’s piece reminded me of a recent teaching that I heard, that has buttressed me in these times when hope is indeed at a low ebb. In November of last year, I was privileged to be part of the packed audience at Mass College of Liberal Arts, present to hear a live interview with the writer and public intellectual Ta-Nehisi Coates. Author of several books, including “We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy,” Coates’s voice, including his analysis of white nationalism in America, and his trenchant understanding of the backlash that fueled the election of Trump, has been powerful and especially helpful.
But it was Coates’ response to the last questioner in the audience that evening that is most relevant here. The young African-American woman, a senior at MCLA, thinking about graduation and her life in the United States now, asked simply, “What is your view of hope today?”
As if anticipating the question, Coates nodded his head and offered words that have stayed with me and even sustained me in these hard times: “I don’t see why hope is important, ” he said. “I don’t need hope. I have duty. Yes, the facts are hard and despairing. It’s always a tragedy at the end of the day. But it’s the in-between that matters.”
Coates went on, revealing the deeply secular premises of his thinking: “It is wrong to need hope to act,” he said. “We African Americans, as a people, have known more than 250 years of bondage, shackled in chains everywhere. Our ancestors struggled and that’s enough to get me out of bed in the morning. I feel gratitude and responsibility to them, to the ones who struggled and allowed me to be here.”
His comments that evening reminded me of some of his writings, especially his essay, “Notes from the Eighth Year,” where he says, “I don’t ever want to lose sight of how short my time is here. And I don’t ever want to forget that resistance must be its own reward, since resistance, at least within the life span of the resistors, almost always fails.”
Rabbi Devorah Jacobson
Hadley