💬 Rays of hope: Sunday Thread.
Some Thoughts and Sunday reads for you and an invitation to share your rays of hope with us 🙏
“Time’s violence rends the soul; by the rent eternity enters.”
Simone Weil
My fellow pilgrim,
It is the last Sunday in July and I would like to share some rays of hope with you which I came across the last week. And I invite you to share your rays of hope with us also at the end of this note!
#1 “Winds of change”
What a month this was! I was not aware how much I suffered the American Dark Night of The Soul until it was lifted. All of a sudden, when so many felt helplessness and political depression creeping in and no hope in sight we witnessed the sky open like after a storm and rays of hope breaking through.
Though I noticed the spiritual shift in myself and around me and in the media landscape Matthew Dowd’s beautiful essay: Morning in America After Dark Night of the Soul helped me put words to it. He suggests to interpret the American soul’s journey just like our individual one’s, longing and in dire need for transformation:
If we or a loved one is in a dark place, has lost hope or optimism, and is dissatisfied with the choices before us, we have no idea where to turn. Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross referred to this as “the dark night of the soul”. Our faith in ourselves or our beliefs is in crisis and our emotional pain is a huge struggle. We try to internally adjust or move out of the darkness, but it just does not seem possible or we think it will take way too much work or we don’t trust change can occur. And then someone does something that completely alters our perception of the problem, and we see light. This person makes a sacrifice so personal and selfless that it opens our eyes that hope exists and decency abides.
Next another person in our life shows up with energy and joy and leadership to help us in this exact moment when a birth of hope is occurring. They are positive and forward looking and call us to a journey that will be meaningful and fun. A journey of purpose and of play. We stand up and realize there is a choice we can make and there is real possibility to get out of the darkness. It took the sacrifice of one and the leadership and joy of another to push away the dark and show us the light. And we now have agency and personal responsibility of transforming our life to the better.
And though I do not have a say in the American election, and though I am rather purple than partisan, I have been moved to see the current president stepping back in humility from a position of power while opening the doors for change and transformation and bipartisan renewal. Or as Dowd has it:
“To get to this unpredictable and transformational moment, to move from the “dark night of the soul”, we needed three things to create the opportunity and opening: the selfless act of one leader, the arrival of another made for our collective psyche, and our response to all this by standing up and moving forward. When this kind of change happens in our own life we are never the same person as before, and so too for our country. Who we were last week is gone, and it is time for us all to make something new. Let’s do this. And bring meaning, joy, and fun back to our politics.”
#2 To live the question
I came across this interview by Sarah Jones with Krista Tippet. What struck me the most was Krista’s relentless hope in the good of all people. The country we live in has become so divided we seem to see each other only in the caricature of the extremes and not as the children of God we all are. Krista’s comments also reminded me of a guest pastor in our local church when she said: “I am political but not partisan.” And also: “To be political means to care for the well-fare of people.”
I feel that this interview takes the same broader perspective. It is thus a perspective I would love to adopt for my own writings:
To be political but not partisan by caring for the well-fare of all people.
Krista does it in her unique way by exploring the spiritual path of the people to whom she talks and by loving and living the question instead of offering quick answers - a RM Rilke motif she has adopted with great mastery.
In this interview she reminds us of a wider spiritual perspective which transcends our momentary sorrows and political landscape where we so often get lost. I found this similarly expressed this week in the reflections of Richard Rohr:
To live in the reign of God is to live with that kind of big perspective, where we move beyond the tiny human-made boundaries that we all create.
#3 Now: Your turn
Now it is your turn, dear fellow traveler. Please share some rays of hope here with us. We are all so hungry for hope. Aren’t we? So please share your hope with us 🙏.
Which readings, podcasts, music, good news, good words or (travel) experiences have given you hope this summer and what has uplifted your soul?
You can write directly in the comment section by clicking below. Feel free to also share a link to your source of hope in your comment :-)
Looking forward hearing from you, Almut (with Chuck and little one)
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Thanks Almut! Yes a dark and perplexing time. I often feel bewildered by what I see and hear and feel. And yet, as you say, rays of light and life break through. I am trying to be still so that I can perceive God’s alternate future (as Walter Brueggmann calls it) breaking through, setting in motion the dynamics of faith and hope and love even in the midst of racism, violence, and poverty (the three dynamics which Matin Luther King, Jr. sought to resist). Where are the signs, the whispers, the finger prints of G-D’s love at work in the midst of it all. And then I try to summon the courage to follow in that direction as I walk through life. Blessings to you! Chris
I feel America is still in her dark night of the soul. Probably for the reasons you think it’s lifted. However, until America turns it heart back to God and His precepts, I don’t see things changing much. Putting trust in people on either side of the political spectrum is not gonna save us.