Last week I had a letter from a born-again Christian friend in Japan, and it set me to thinking. He worries about my soul. In the letter he asked about my hope for heaven. Did I agree with a mutual friend, a retired Unitarian Universalist minister, who said heaven and hell are not eternal destinations for our souls but symbols describing the good and evil of this life? The letter asked point blank: "If you are right and I am wrong I have nothing to worry about, but if the teachings in the Bible are the opposite of your faith, well. . . ?"
I'll write him that I, too, believe heaven and hell are religious symbols, neither reward for good nor punishment for evil. I am decidedly pessimistic about eternal life, but I do not even hope for it, for I cannot imagine anything more meaningful than this life. If there is another existence, I cannot think of a better way to prepare for it than to live this one in love and justice. I'll just have to take my chances. I neither worry nor despair. I remain hopeful.
This mid-winter holiday stretch is a time when our lives are in sharpest perspective – our hope and despair at peak and nadir. Some among us experience Seasonal Affective Disorder Syndrome, SAD – sometimes mildly depressed, sometimes driven to despair. I find in me a nostalgic and poignant "wintry spirituality" wondering how many more such seasons will be mine. What to do? While shallow optimism is but a "motivational speech" or "how to" book away, there are deeper issues to be addressed: hope and optimism, pessimism and despair. It has been said that "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true."[1]
Albert Schweitzer was a little closer to the truth, I think, when he said, "An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while the pessimist sees only the red light. . . . The truly wise person is colorblind."[2]
In Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson we read: "A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married Immediately after his wife died: Johnson said, it was the triumph of hope over experience."[3]
But my favorite reflection on optimism is from Don Marquis in archy and mehitabel: "an optimist is a guy that has never had much experience."[4]
After six decades of experience I find myself a hopeful pessimist. Optimism or pessimism grow out of an objective analysis of how things are likely to turn out. Even a casual listen to the House impeachment proceedings last week would be grounds for considerable pessimism about the state of the union. Things are unraveling and are likely to continue to do so. Legislative stagnation for the foreseeable future is likely as this presidential morality play unfolds. I am pessimistic about the outcome, yet hopeful about my country. How so?
I look to John Bunyan's 17th century classic, Pilgrim's Progress. Bunyan himself was a non-conformist minister who spent years in prison for his heresies. He knew pessimism and despair at first hand, yet he penned a religious classic – a long, allegorical sermon on hope. Christian and Hopeful are journeying on the borders of Heaven. They struggle past Doubting Castle, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, Giant Despair. Finally, they are within sight of the Heavenly City "builded of pearls and precious stones, .. the streets thereof were paved with gold." They are met by two shining figures who tell them they have but to cross the river to their destination. But there is no bridge. They must enter the water to get to the other side.
"The pilgrims then, especially Christian, began to despond in his mind. . . .(he) began to sink . . . and said "I sink in deep waters; the billows go over my head, all his waves go over me." Then Hopeful responds, "Be of good cheer, my brother: I feel the bottom, and it is good." Hopeful's spirit carried the pessimistic and despairing Christian into the Heavenly City. Hope triumphs over experience and pessimism.
Hope is a religious virtue, grounded in a human refusal to concede to the harsh realities of living. Hope is grounded in a cosmic life that transcends our own embarrassingly brief time on earth. Hope is grounded in a belief in justice, the conviction that there is an underlying order of things. Hope is always prepared for the worst, yet always seeks the best. Hope trusts in life without denying the tragic sense of life. It asserts the goodness of life in spite of adversity.[5]
We live in danger that our well-founded pessimism and despair may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we are pessimistic about our future, fearing it is just too much to bear, we are likely to draw into our shells and wait out the storm. We thus become a party to the very despair we have predicted.
We are equally in danger if we are merely optimistic about the future, confident that things will all work out in the end. That too, can be self-defeating and illusory, for things seldom just "work out for the best." That is merely wishful thinking. As Charlie Brown says in Peanuts, "Hoping to goodness is not theologically sound."
If things "work out for the best," it is likely by the hard efforts of human beings who have a basic trust in life and are convinced that what they do matters. Both pessimism and optimism inspire apathy in living - one believing nothing can be done and the other believing everything will be done - by someone or something else. Fate is what happens to us. Destiny is what we help create. There is a chasm between them.
Emily Dickinson puts it delicately, but strongly,
"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all."[6]
Frederic Nietzsche in the last century stated it even more colorfully in musical metaphor when he asked, "Who is this pessimist who plays the flute?" Human beings are those creatures who sense the music of life even when, especially when, times are hardest. We are those creatures who act with faith in life and hope for the future, despite the reality of death and the prospects of history. At our best we are like Christian and Hopeful, who when touching bottom are energized by the vision of the Heavenly City – for us the Beloved Community of Earth.
I find there are signals of hope everywhere, transcending shallow optimism, defying pessimism and despair. 0ne might suppose, for example, Martin Luther King, assaying the plight of black people in Montgomery in the 1950's, must have had grounds for pessimism. It was hope for justice not optimism that moved him.
0ne might suppose human rights activists Protestant David Trimble and Catholic John Hume would have given up in the face of decades of bloody violence in Northern Ireland. Yet last Thursday, the birthday of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, and the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, they accepted the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize. In human nature and human affairs irony abounds.
One might suppose that the music might have ceased in Vienna – 1945 – as war raged about the city. During the concert of the Vienna Philharmonic the rumble of guns could be heard in the distance. The Soviet Army entered the city, disrupting all normal activities. Within a week, the concert schedule had been resumed.
It is no accident that holidays and holy days of hope appear at the darkest time of the year - the Roman Saturnalia, the Hindu Divali, the Jewish Hanukkah and Christmas all celebrate religious hope. When the days grew darkest and coldest, the human spirit of our ancestors hit bottom. To them it was not the mere inconvenience of cold and dark and snow. It was a threat to life itself, for they did not know that this rhythm of the seasons was inexorable, that spring would come as surely as winter.
And so when the light began to grow longer once more they began to anticipate the life-giving promise of spring with its warmth and light and life. They lit fires in the darkness; they sang songs into the cold. The most depressing time of year became an occasion for the most exuberant feasting and festivity. "We hold the turning of the year as a promise; and the renewing of life is our solid hope . . . . In the time of cold comes a messenger of warmth, and in the days of death there is heard the good news of life."[7]
With all due respect to my childhood friend in Japan,. my hope is not in my eternal life, but in the eternal life of humanity and the world. My hope is in the capacity of men and women of all ages and traditions to encounter all that finitude can fling at us and still be able to sing. My hope is in the courage of men and women, great and small, to act as if their lives made a difference no matter what the odds.
Who is this pessimist who plays the flute? It is our ancient forebears who lit bonfires on the hill to proclaim the winter solstice; it is the baby in the manger who reminds us of the rebirth of humanity in each child who comes into the world; it is the musician, who on the darkest days, will pick up a flute and play a tune.
I have not heard any better expression of hope than in the 13th century Sufi mystic poet Rumi:
"Come, come whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving, come.
Come, though you have broken your vow a thousand times.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, yet again, come."
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