For several weeks, I have been thinking about hope. As I reflect on hope and talk about it with progressive friends and colleagues, I am aware that many others are also thinking about hope. Activists committed to a range of movement struggles think about hope often, and we are asking questions. Activists are wondering: Is hope a necessity? A luxury? A requirement? Is a sense of hope contagious? What does one do when hope is in short supply?
Hope is at a low ebb at our house. That does not mean my husband, Michael Klare, and I are overwhelmed by despair, nor does it mean we are giving up, giving in or backing away from our work in movement struggles. It simply means hope is at a low ebb for both of us.
Michael, now 76, has been part of political movements for over 50 years and has been writing on issues of war and peace and (more recently) climate change for almost as long. His first book, “War Without End,” was published in 1972. For over a year now, Michael has been grinding his teeth while reading The New York Times and holding the paper with a death grip. He also calls out in the night — crying out that “bombs are coming,” shouting about the South China Sea and yelling about Trump with swear words I never hear him use in the daytime. And Michael is not alone. Millions of Americans are grinding their teeth, sleeping fitfully and turning to therapists and bakeries to cope.
I asked Michael recently what troubled him most in the world today, and he said immediately: Climate change and the threat of nuclear war. Then, after pausing, he said, “But I have a long list behind those two.” Most activists have many concerns — a long list of grave worries.
Having recently read “The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear,” edited by Paul Rogat Loeb, I found many gems among the 49 essays by very smart people. But I also found some platitudes about hope and sweeping statements that I could quarrel with. Howard Zinn’s essay is delightfully Zinn-ish. But he has one three-word sentence I am still pondering. Zinn says simply, “You need hope.” Maybe. Maybe even a glimmer of hope will do.
I know that for some of us, we go on, we do the work, we continue — even passionately and energetically — when hope is at a low ebb. And the work still matters and the commitment is still strong. Václav Havel’s words have been helpful to me, and have, in a way, redefined hope in my mind. Havel said, “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.”
Like so many neighbors, friends and colleagues, I attend a dozen or more meetings or events each month that focus on political issues and movement struggles. Since last fall, I have heard the expression “environmental and societal collapse” increasingly often. Like others, I am unsure if the collapse that is looming can be averted. But that does not stop our work, our tireless efforts and our commitment to make change. Can one continue when hope is at a low ebb? I think so.
In her essay “From Hope to Hopelessness” in the Loeb book, Margaret Wheatley addresses some of my questions about hope. Wheatley discusses “… being liberated from results, giving up outcomes, doing what feels right rather than effective.” Wheatley stirred my thinking about hope when she unpacked the Buddhist teaching that hopelessness is not the opposite of hope — fear is. “Hope and fear are inescapable partners,” she writes.
Wheatley continues, “Anytime we hope for a certain outcome, and work hard to make it happen, then we also introduce fear — fear of failing, fear of loss. Hopelessness is free of fear and thus can be quite liberating.”
Although I am not feeling hopeless, I find Wheatley’s words helpful. She draws our attention to Thomas Merton, the late Christian mystic, who believed that over time people struggle less and less for an idea, and more and more for specific people. Merton wrote, “In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”
Weaving her own and Merton’s insights together, Wheatley writes, “We are consoled and strengthened by being hopeless together.” She continues, “We don’t need specific outcomes. We need each other.”
I do not have a final word or a tidy closing to wrap up these musings on hope. But I am strengthened by the idea that we struggle on for and with each other. With that thought in mind, I recall last Sunday in church in Springfield, when Pastor L.A. Love said, in a prayer, “… send your spirit to those about to throw in the towel without hope.”
I realized when he said those words that I want loved ones to send their spirit to me because, for me, hope is at a low ebb. I also realized, as Pastor Love prayed, that I have it within me to send my spirit to those about to throw in the towel without hope. Merton and Wheatley may be right — it is about relationships. Concerning hope, maybe I can and many of us struggling can, paradoxically, be both hope givers and receivers. And together we carry on.
The Rev. Dr. Andrea Ayvazian, of Northampton, is an associate pastor at Alden Baptist Church in Springfield. She is also the founder and director of the Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership, which offers free movement-building classes from Greenfield to Springfield.