On Keeping Hope Alive

 

Albrecht Dürer, Melancholia (1514)

Kenneth Clark writes: "In the Middle Ages melancholia meant a simple combination of sloth, boredom and despondency that must have been common in an illiterate society.... This figure is humanity at its most evolved, with wings to carry her upwards. She holds in her hands the compasses, symbols of measurement by which science will conquer the world. Around her are all the emblems of constructive action: a saw, a plane, pincers, scales, a hammer, a melting pot, and two elements in solid geometry, a polyhedron and sphere. Yet all these aids to construction are discarded and she sits there brooding on the futility of human effort. Her obsessive stare reflects some deep psychic disturbance. ...Here, in Dürer's prophetic vision, is one more way in which civilisation can be destroyed, from within." (Civilisation: A Personal View, Harper & Row, 1969, pp. 152, 155.)

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There was a time—it must have been when I was younger—when I was often wrong about global affairs but rarely in doubt. Things were simpler back then. I took a stand opposed to most everything supported by the Republican Party, and took a stand in favor of most everything supported by the Democratic Party.

Now our nation has more guns than people, and our campaign expenditures have no limits. Global issues—from pandemic to immigration, from global warming to ocean pollution—are paralyzing partisan politics, both national and international. I find myself asking "What would Greta do?" I don't understand filibusters or cryptocurrencies. I feel threatened by fear and despair.

   

Yet I am convinced that the false confidence I once had and today's threat of despair both betray spiritual attitudes appropriate to religious life.

Here I am a Christian indebted to the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza.

In his Ethics (1677) Spinoza inquires into differences between fear and despair, and into differences between hope and confidence. In both cases, he writes, the differences depend upon the presence or absence of certainty. [Footnote 1]

Spinoza defines confidence as "a positive feeling arising from certainty concerning some desired outcome." Remove the certainty, he writes, and confidence becomes hope.

Despair, he writes, is "a negative feeling arising from certainty concerning some undesired outcome." Remove the certainty, and despair becomes fear.

Spinoza believes that as finite creatures we can never be certain of outcomes. Therefore, confidence and despair—both presupposing certainty—are unrealistic states of mind.

In contrast, hope and fear—both admitting uncertainty—are realistic states of mind.

I take heart from Spinoza's description of hope and fear as realistic, as opposed to unrealistic confidence and despair.

In traditional Christian lists, hope is named as a virtue, but confidence is not. In traditional Christian lists despair is named as a vice, but fear is not.

Celebrating the story of Christ's coming into history, Christians can therefore sing "the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight" Hopes and fears are realistic. We can live with them. Not so with presumptuous confidence and existential despair.

In his mid-18th century poem "Eloisa to Abelard,"Alexander Pope describes melancholic despair: 

        Melancholy sits, and round her throws

        A death-like silence and dread repose...." 

"Death-like silence and dread repose...." The contagious symptoms of despair are silence and inactivity. It follows that the remedies for despair are speaking out and taking actions. How are we to accomplish this?

A paramount way is by means of our voluntary associations.

The French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville toured America and in 1824 and 1840 published a monumental two-volume report he titled Democracy in America. In the United States he was exceptionally struck by what he calls "intellectual and moral associations":

Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions, constantly form associations...religious, moral, serious, futile, extensive or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found establishments for education, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes..., to found hospitals, prisons, and schools.... Nothing, in my opinion, is more deserving of our attention than the intellectual and moral associations of America. ...We have hardly ever seen anything of the kind. [Footnote 2]

In a 2021 fact sheet titled Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) in the United States, our US State Department echoes de Tocqueville:

NGOs represent virtually every conceivable ideology, political cause, religion, social issue, and interest group.... Indeed, NGOs exist to represent virtually every cause imaginable.

Then this dumbfounding State Department disclosure:

Approximately 1.5 million NGOs operate in the United States. (My emphasis.)

 No excuses: we can pick as we wish! 

For years I have admired and supported the Friends Committee on National Legislation. FCNL is an NGO composed of two distinct organizations: a lobbying organization and a charitable organization.

Here are FCNL words of self-definition:

        We seek a world free of war and the threat of war.

        We seek a society with equity and justice for all.

        We seek a community where every person's potential may be fulfilled.

        We seek an earth restored.

The FCNL website offers specific educational and service opportunities in great number and variety:

Census accuracy and inclusivity / Deportations / Discrepancies of wealth / Economic justice / Environment and energy / Gun violence and prevention / Hunger at home and abroad / Immigrants and refugees / Involvement of religious congregations / Justice reform / Letters and visits to Senators and Representatives / Local lobbying / Middle East peace and justice / Native American justice / Nuclear weapons / Shutting down the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility / An annual Lobby Weekend of Advocacy and Action in Washington DC / Threats to our democracy / US poverty alleviation / US militarism and wars / Elections and voting / Youth participation / and more.

FCNL is an NGO that particularly impresses me. Other citizens will of course choose differently. But none of us can complain of a lack of options.

So, Melancholy! Lift your scowling face from your fist. Put to use the instruments of knowledge that surround you. Keep hope alive by joining NGOs where members make donations, share hopes and fears, speak out, and take actions.

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Postscript: Professor James Luther Adams (1901–1994), one of the preeminent Christian social ethicists of the 20th century, took pleasure in quoting Christ's words in Matthew 7:16 and 20: "You will know them by their fruits." Then he would parody with a twinkle: "You will know them by their groups."

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Footnote 1. Ethics, Part II, Prop. XLIX, Note.  Ethics, Part III, Prop. XVIII, Note II.  Ethics, Props. XIV–XV, Explanation.

Footnote 2. Democracy in America, Volume 2, Section 2, Chapter 5.

Fragments on Grace

When despair for the world grows in me,

I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.

For a time I rest in the grace of the world,

and am free.

                                           ~Wendell Berry

Within the past year two friends have independently asked me whether I can explain the religious concept of "grace." I've had to reply "not really." The best I've been able do is to assemble this collection of sentences containing the word "grace."

Fragments on Grace

Hope for the world's despair:
we feel the nations' pain;
can anything repair
this broken earth again?
For this we pray:
in every place
a spark of grace
to light the way.
               ~Ally Barret

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying "You are accepted."
               ~Paul Tillich

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.
               ~Frederick Buechner

I recognize the delivery of grace to my day, even if I cannot identify a specific return address.
               ~Mary Anne Radmacher

Grace is a power that comes in and transforms a moment into something better.
               ~Caroline Myss

You can have the other words—chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.
               ~Mary Oliver

We are born broken. We live by mending. The grace of God is glue.
               ~Eugene O'Neill

Grace is bestowed on us, not because we have done good works, but that we may be able to do them.
               ~Saint Augustine

For me, every hour is grace.
               ~Elie Wiesel

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do. And by the grace of God, I will.
               ~Edward Everett Hale

The law works fear and wrath; grace works hope and mercy.
               ~Martin Luther

To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness.
               ~Eckhart Tolle

Knowing the odds against your unique birth,

the small chance your step would be directed

my way or that I would be selected

by you from all the women on earth,

aware of how often couples are pulled apart

by accidental sources of distress,

circumstances none before could guess

who celebrated their propitious start,

how can I set our table without awe?

We eat and do the dishes, one ritual

of many. Yet what seems to be habitual

is daily thrown by probability's law.

That by my side is your most likely place

remains for me what I know best of grace.

                ~Marian Willard Blackwell

Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to our efforts will flood the soul.
               ~Simone Weil

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.
               ~Karl Barth

The wind of divine grace is always blowing. You just need to spread your sail. Whenever you do anything, do it with your whole heart concentrated on it. Think day and night, I am of the essence of that Supreme Being-Consciouosness-Bliss. What fear and anxiety have I?
               ~Swami Vivekananda

Sense of sin may be often great and more felt than grace; yet not be more than grace.
               ~Thomas Adams

Above all, live in the present moment and God will give you all the grace you need.
               ~Francois Fenelon

Sometimes our brains are our own worst enemy because grace isn't logical.
               ~Judah Smith

It is rash to intrude upon the piety of others: both the depth and grace of it elude the stranger.
               ~George Santayana

You cannot predict when grace takes place; you can only wait.
               ~Mata Amritanandamayi

Each season brings a world of enjoyment and interest in the watching of its unfolding, its gradual harmonious development, its culminating graces—and just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and a radical change comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train.
               ~Mark Twain

It seems to me one cannot sit down in the Round Reading Room of the British Museum without a heart full of grateful reverence. I own to have said my grace at the table, and to have thanked Heaven for my English birthright, freely to partake of these beautiful books, and speak the truth I find there.
               ~William Makepeace Thackeray

Grace is something you can never get but only be given.
               ~Frederick Buechner

You cannot beat the clock. My advice is to grab your moments of grace and enjoy them while they last.
               ~Amy Dickinson

Amid countless everyday miracles, I come in contact with something greater than myself and realize I am a part of it. I move in wonder through inspiration, reverence, gratitude,  interconnectedness, transcendence, and grace.
               ~John Paul Caponigro

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Gracious Light and Shadow

Awaiting an expected phone call on a recent afternoon, I lay back on the bed in my Study and was struck by this color-and-shadow pattern on the ceiling:

I've tried to understand the dynamics of this complex pattern. Here's what I think.

On the left, the main source of light is my Study window, transmitting relatively cool, blueish daylight.

On the right, the main source of light is a lamp on my desk, with a warmish bulb and a yellowish lampshade, resulting in an orangish hue.

On the vertical walls in the photo we can see the basic blue and orange.

Each of the light sources was casting a shadow of the fan onto the ceiling. A shadow is a darkening, and darkening intensifies color that is otherwise pale. Thus the shadows appeared bluer and oranger than their unshadowed backgrounds.

Orange light from the desk lamp was being blocked by the fan blades, and the resulting shadow was therefore a darkening of predominantly ambient blue light. Thus the darkened shadow looked blue.

Similarly, the blue light transmitted by the window was being blocked by the fan blades, and the resulting shadow was a darkening of predominantly ambient orange light. Thus the darkened shadow looked orange.

At three locations the blue and orange shadows crossed paths. These crossings are brown—the simple combination of blue + orange.

In my blog posting of April 6, I quoted Hans Küng: "This is grace: new chances in life." The color-and-shadow dynamics on my ceiling have been for me a form of grace: new delight in life.

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