Hope Wrap-up - Paying Attention

Quick programming announcement - This wednesday (7/23) from 2-3 ET,

MaryAnn McKibben Dana

and I will be doing our next live video Pop Culture Pastors Hour. We were planning on discussing the HBO show from a few years ago called Station Eleven. However, there is discussion between us about doing the newest iteration of Superman (now out in theaters). Just watch our feeds and you’ll see what we’ll be doing! Ok…onto Hope Wrap Up—-Paying Attention

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For the last 49 days, I’ve been drawing inspiration from the OnBeing series they’ve shared this summer they entitled The Hope Portal. You can find all their posts from the series at their substack page:

Over those 49 days, I’ve shared 26 different reflections inspired by Krista Tippett’s wisdom and the wisdom of those with whom she was in conversation - arienne marie brown, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ocean Vuong, Joy Harjo, and Ross Gay. There have been conversations about stirring our imaginations, the power of writing, gentleness with our words, the nature of time, and the power of delight. All of these were pointing towards the experience and expression of hope in this world. I don’t know your experience but for me, this has been a beautiful space in which to find myself. I also find it curious/interesting that a year ago, I was also centering on hope -

MaryAnn McKibben Dana

’s book, Hope: A User’s Manual.¹ Something about summers and hope?

My Saturday was marked largely by a 3½ hour block where I was in a two zoom sessions - the first with the Martin Luther King Jr Center on the foundations of Kingian non-violent resistance followed by a time where I was invited to help a group of people process their experience following the police response to the peaceful (albeit impromptu and not permit-ed) march over the Roebling Bridge on Thursday evening. (Link, Link, Link - three different perspectives on what happened). Throughout the first, we centered on the foundational principles of non-violent resistance and how those, as hard as they are, are vital for a new way of moving forward in our world today.

• Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people

• Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding

• Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people

• Nonviolence holds that voluntary, unearned suffering for a just cause is redemptive; and can educate and transform

• Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate

• Nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice

But what was also acknowledged was how hard it is to practice that not only personally but corporately as well. This was also in the second conversation I was a part of. The heart of this, however, is about transformation of hearts, minds, people, communities, nations and the world. In the MLK seminar, they quoted this from Dr King:

The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community. it is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men.

But what spoke to me through the whole of those 3½ hours, through the last 49 days, through what I read in Scripture, and in what I have experienced in my life and witnessed in the lives of others is how all of this is lived among ALL of what life brings us. Inspired by his conversation with Krista Tippett, I have begun reading Ross Gay’s Book of Delights and he shares these two gems in the chapter entitled “Joy is Such a Human Madness.”

And given as I am writing a book of delights, and I am ultimately interested in joy, I am curious about the relationship between pleasure and delight—pleasure as Smith offers it, and delight. I will pause here to offer a false etymology: de-light suggests both “of light” and “without light.” And both of them concurrently is what I’m talking about. What I think I’m talking about. Being of and without at once. Or: joy.²

It astonishes me sometimes—no, often—how every person I get to know—everyone, regardless of everything, by which I mean everything—lives with some profound personal sorrow. Brother addicted. Mother murdered. Dad died in surgery. Rejected by their family. Cancer came back. Evicted. Fetus not okay. Everyone, regardless, always, of everything. Not to mention the existential sorrow we all might be afflicted with, which is that we, and what we love, will soon be annihilated. Which sounds more dramatic than it might. Let me just say dead. Is this, sorrow, of which our impending being no more might be the foundation, the great wilderness? Is sorrow the true wild? And if it is—and if we join them—your wild to mine—what’s that? For joining, too, is a kind of annihilation. What if we joined our sorrows, I’m saying. I’m saying: What if that is joy?³

Ultimately through all of this, I come back to a simple thing - paying attention. Paying attention to what’s happening within me. Paying attention to what’s happening with others. Paying attention to what’s happening in the world. Paying attention to those who are often ignored, unseen, or rejected. Paying attention to how we are opening (or not) our imaginations. Paying attention to what what I hear in Scripture. Paying attention to the wisdom of others. Paying attention to the stirrings of the Spirit. Paying attention.

So in that spirit, these flowers. I had Scout with me at my office while on the zoom meetings and afterward we grabbed a short walk at a little nature center near the church. While we were walking, Scout wanted to go down one of the non-paved paths and we came to this.

All these flowers all “looking” in the same direction. Paying attention, one might say.

As I shared at the beginning of this week of delights, I am going to take a week or so off from writing partly to be kind to your inboxes after showing up every day for the last week and also to just take a bit of a break myself. So I’ll see you back here next Sunday or so. In the meantime...pay attention and I expect hope will show up.

Here’s Scout with the flowers and also her snoozing before we headed our for our walk this morning:

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

1. I cannot recommend this book highly enough

2. Gay, Ross. The Book of Delights: Essays (p. 44). (Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill). Kindle Edition.

3. Gay, Ross. The Book of Delights: Essays (pp. 49-50). (Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill). Kindle Edition.