Hope is the Thing with Feathers Denise Cumbee Long

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1 Hope is the Thing with Feathers Denise Cumbee Long Isaiah 54:11-12, 55:1-3, November 30, 2008 Romans 8:19-25 Binkley Baptist Church 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. This poem by Emily Dickinson is a familiar one and beloved by many. It is a lovely metaphor, the fragile, singing bird of hope which is not defeated by storm or cold. It is an image which gives voice to the presence of possibility. No promised outcomes here, but the accompaniment of a feathered spirit that sings warmth into the chilled places of our souls. But other poets and artists have provided different images of wings and spirits that are not so soothing. In 1920, the Swiss-German artist, Paul Klee painted his famous piece, Angelus Novus, New Angel. German Jewish philosopher, Walter Benjamin purchased the New Angel in 1921, and it remained one of his prized possessions. In 1940, just months before his own death, Benjamin explained why this painting fascinated him for so long. He wrote: Klee shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing.it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. (From Benjamin s Illuminations, cited by Dr. Kenneth Kovacs in sermon of Nov. 17, 2007 from Richard Bauckham and Trevor Hart, Hope Against Hope: Christian Eschatology at the Turn of the Millennium (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999, 23). 1

2 Benjamin s view of the angel of history is not a very optimistic vision. However, as we think about hope this morning on the first Sunday of Advent, it might be that this angel speaks to us of the current emotional climate of our lives. We are propelled forward by forces from the past that are beyond our control, the experiences and tragedies that have shaped our lives and our world, the sad consequences that seem to pile up at our feet as we gaze backward, wishing we could undo or heal them. In many ways, we may feel captive to a world in chaos, bewildered by the wreckage, but unable to stop remembering or stop looking backward. I am reminded of the film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The plot involves two lovers, Joel and Clementine, who have hired a mysterious firm, Lacuna, Inc., to erase their memories of each other after a nasty fight. The term "lacuna" means a gap or missing part. Lacunar amnesia is a gap in one's memory about a specific event. The movie title is taken from the poem Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope which was the story of a tragic love affair. One of the characters in the film recites these lines: How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd. How often do we long for the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, the lacunar amnesia, which might keep us from being haunted by our past! But like Paul Klee s angel, we humans are blessed and cursed by memory, and we stare backwards at the broken relationships, the loved ones lost, the actions we never dared to take, the ugly words we cannot take back. From a bigger perspective, we see the catastrophes pile up in the chain of events which make up the history of our world- wars, famine, terrorist attacks, poverty, violence, environmental destruction. Like the angel, we want to awaken the dead and make whole what has been smashed. But the stormy winds blow us helplessly forward, even as we cannot turn around to face what is coming. Yet, we also dare to speak of hope. And for many of us, we wonder what it means. How do we have hope in an age such as ours? How can we see the pain which has piled up at our feet and still believe that life has purpose and meaning? How do we keep ourselves from slipping into the realm of despair, just like those souls entering Dante s Inferno who pass through the gates proclaiming, Abandon hope, all ye who enter here? We wonder about the promises made to the exiled people of Israel in the book of Isaiah. These were people living in desperate times in an unfamiliar land, bodies and spirits crushed by a conquering army. Yet, the prophet reminds them that God will rebuild that which was destroyed, that they can find spiritual water that will quench their thirst even in a strange place, and that they can look forward to the day when they will leave their captivity, a day in which all 2

3 creation will join in celebration. The mountains and hills will burst into singing and the trees will shout for joy. One of our Binkley members, Brian Graves, has written an Advent reflection on some of the writings of Isaiah. Brian and other Binkley folks have contributed some wonderful poetry and meditations to an Advent devotional booklet that you are welcome to pick up in the narthex after the service today. One of the questions Brian asks in his reflection is one for all of us: What are the experiences of exile in your own life? We can all think of times when we feel lost, anxious, or insecure, when the world does not feel much like home anymore. What does it mean to have hope in spite of the evidence of the past, the pain of memory, or the sensation of exile? First, I do not believe that hope is the same as optimism. At the end of his long, influential life, the great prophet and preacher, William Sloane Coffin, Jr., minister at Riverside Church in Manhattan for many years, was questioned about what he thought about the future. Are you optimistic about the future of the world? he was asked. No, he said. No, I am not optimistic. But I am hopeful. Coffin went on to say: It s hope that helps us keep the faith, despite the evidence, knowing that only in so doing has the evidence any chance of changing. (William Sloane Coffin, Credo, Foreword by James Carroll, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004, 19. Cited by Kenneth Kovacs.) The evidence may be grim. But, we can be still be hopeful, even without optimism. Vaclav Haval was the former President of the Czech Republic who endured years of humiliation at the hands of a totalitarian government to take a leadership role in the creation of a new Czech Republic in the 1990's. Haval said: "Hope is definitely not the same as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well. It is the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." (from Disturbing the Peace, chapter 5, quoted by Rev. David Robb, Hope is an Orientation of the Heart, June 25, 2006). When our family lived in Oberlin, Ohio, I worked with David Orr, Chair of the Environmental Studies Department at Oberlin College. He is a national leader in ecological literacy and design and a contemporary prophet warning of the dangers of global warming. In a recent article, David also made a nice distinction between authentic hope and optimism. He writes: Optimism is the recognition that the odds are in your favor; hope is the faith that things will work out whatever the odds. Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up. Hopeful people are actively engaged in defying the odds or changing the odds I know of no good reason for anyone to be optimistic about the human future, but I know lots of reasons to be hopeful. (David Orr, Authentic hope is made of sterner stuff than optimism, The Leopold Outlook, Summer 2008, p.5). 3

4 David describes optimism as a falsely cheery attitude that soothes and reassures. Hope, in his view, is made of sterner stuff than optimism. He says: Hope requires us to check our optimism at the door and enter the future without illusions. It requires a level of honesty, self-awareness, and sobriety that is difficult to summon and sustain. I know a great many smart people and many very good people, but I know far fewer people who can handle hard truth gracefully without despairing. (Ibid.) David believes that authentic hope requires a hard look at the truth followed by heroic human action. The big issues of climate change, biological holocaust, global poverty, terrorism, and war must be seen for what they are. An optimistic approach minimizes the problems and offers quick fixes without asking much sacrifice or effort. We buy hybrid cars, compact fluorescent lightbulbs, and energy made from cleaner coal and feel better about ourselves. We find it hard to live with the knowledge that we can t buy our way out of a global emergency. We don t want to drastically change our consumer way of life, so instead we continue to walk north on a south bound train, as Peter Montague once put it. This is not heroic. It s a naïve and false optimism- what we use to soothe and reassure ourselves in order to keep doing what we ve always done. We may appear to be moving forward, but the train is still hurtling toward catastrophe. Authentic hope tries to stop the train. It recognizes the evils of the current age, sees them in their true light, and then digs deep to find the spiritual resources to confront and change them. On a biblical level, hope boils down to trust in a Divine Presence, a Presence that embraces us and all of creation, one which continually calls forth new life out of ruin, exile, and brokenness. Paul writes about this hope in his letter to the Romans: All of creation waits with eager longing for God to reveal God s children there was hope that creation itself would one day be set free from its slavery to decay, says Paul. For it was by hope that we were saved; but if we see what we hope for, then it is not really hope. For who of us hopes for something we see? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Romans 8: 19, 21, 24-25) Hope is the trust that time and time again God will come to us, adventus, bringing forth a new thing, a fresh moment, a liberating word. In the meantime, we must work and wait. The Spanish verb, esperar, means both to wait and to hope. Authentic hope is an active waiting. We see the present in all its wonder and terror and realize that we are a long way from Paradise. We plunge into the messiness of life with our sleeves rolled up, but we also realize that we have limited control of how it all works out. That s where the waiting comes in, and the trust in a power beyond ourselves. Last week, my family surprised me with a hot air balloon ride as a 50 th birthday gift. My sister in Asheville had arranged for an early morning ascent, and after joking about the status of my will and my life insurance, I bundled into a heavy coat, steeled myself with some hot coffee, and climbed into a flimsy looking basket which held five people. I must confess that I had some 4

5 moments of anxiety watching the colorful cloth balloon fill with air, which was first blown in by a powerful fan, and then by a hot burner. However, the balloon swelled into shape, and amazingly, we gently floated up from the grassy field, lifting gracefully over the tree tops, over houses with startled dogs barking below, past mountain ridges, and up into the cold, clear sky. Fields spread out beneath us, covered with frost. Rivers sparkled in the gold of early morning sunlight. We saw the misty shape of Mt. Pisgah nearby and Mt. Mitchell far off in the distance. The man who was flying the balloon sent periodic bursts of hot air into the canopy above us, raising us higher, or pulled on ropes beside our heads to release air from the balloon, causing us to descend. He explained that there was really no way to steer our craft. His only control was over how much we went up or down. Going side to side or right or left was totally dependent on the wind and air currents. This came as a surprise to me. I guess I had assumed that a balloon was like an airplane, complete with steering capability. It was a bit disconcerting, and also exhilarating, to hang suspended in the sky waiting to see which direction the wind would take us. It also meant that landing was tricky, as our balloon operator tried to lower the balloon to just the right level to catch the invisible air currents that would take us in the reassuring direction of a field where we could set down safely, avoiding the power lines which seemed, all of a sudden, to be everywhere. Nevertheless, our balloon did descend gracefully, cleared the power lines, and landed gently in the field where the chasers grabbed onto ropes and lines and pulled hard to keep us safely on the ground while we disembarked. We had made it! Somehow the combination of chaos and control, working the lines and waiting for air currents, not only launched us into the sky but brought us safely back home. Working and waiting, trust and hope. Hope is the thing that rises. I remember another angel that I saw on a trip to Germany a couple of years ago. We were in a small chapel in a historic church in Cologne. The building had been heavily damaged by bombs during the second World War, and the chapel had been rebuilt. In the front corner, near the altar, was a modern sculpture of a black angel, her body extended in flight, her wings outspread. The ruins of a post-war world lay under her. Like Paul Klee s angel, catastrophe was at her feet. But, unlike that angel, she was able to hold the pain and still face into the future. In this season of Advent, as we wait for the coming again of Emmanuel, God-With-Us, the One of Many Names, may we let hope, the thing with feathers, sing its way into our hearts. Amen. 5

The Eight Qualities of a Healthy Spiritual Life

OPENING (Barb) The Eight Qualities of a Healthy Spiritual Life A service lead by Barbara R. Call and Rev. Carolyne M. Call at the, MA, Unitarian Universalist You ve all seen them magazine quizzes or articles