Times are dire, but the Christian hope is that God is not just with us and for us, but also ahead of us. Advent, which started on Sunday, is a time of holding on to this hope, a space in which we are invited to be transformed, and begin to dream about and create a future that is of love, writes Dr Cath Connelly. Dr Connelly is author of Handbook of Hope: Emerging Stories Beyond a Disintegrating World and co-director of the Living Well Centre for Christian Spirituality*.
by Dr Cath Connelly
After St Brigid pestered for months the king of Leinster for land on which to build a monastery, the king disparagingly told her that she could have as much land for her monastery as the size of her mantle, her cloak. At this, St Brigid, who, with St Patrick and St Columba, was to become one of Ireland’s patron saints, requested that four of her Sisters each take one corner of this mantle and begin to walk backwards, stretching the cloak out to its fullest size. By God’s grace, the Sisters continued to stretch that mantle out until it covered hundreds of miles of rich Irish countryside, land that housed her monastery for centuries and continues to be known as the Curragh of Kildare, Brigid’s land.
That’s the thing about hope – the sense of creative expectation where achieving the very thing you desire is put in place by beginning the process of dreaming its potential. In this 6th century apocryphal story, Brigid’s hope for land on which to build a monastery became a tangible reality.
When speaking of hope, I’m not talking here about optimism, for optimism is not the same as hope. No happy disposition is going to bring about crucial changes to climate change, mental illness, unemployment, human exploitation. Nor am I speaking about manifesting a desired outcome through some sort of wishful thinking, for all the wishful thinking in the world will not fill an empty belly if there is no food available. I am talking about being in a liminal time when we can no longer live as we used to, but that which is emerging is still to be created.
This sense of opening ourselves to the potential of this time means that we do not have to know how our part in the future of the universe will unfold; all we have to do is say “yes” to being a part of this unfolding. This is the paradigm shift of hope. Whilst our personality might be such that we believe that the future will have positive outcomes, this general sense of wellbeing differs from hope. Hope is active, the guiding impetus being intention. Researchers tell us that hopeful people engage in “pathway thinking” where they are able to come up with lots of different ways in which they can successfully reach a chosen goal. Alongside this capacity to see alternatives, is the idea that hopeful people are motivated to use these pathways to initiate, and then continue on with, the actions that are needed to advance towards those goals. The sort of hope that brings about a sustainable future is about desire; it is about describing the future we desire and hope for, thus providing the energy to actively participate in bringing that dream alive.
Where hope enters is in the deep understanding that there is something intrinsic about what it is to be human in that we are able to face the limits of our existence and say “and yet...” And yet there is always more.
We’re going to need this sense of holding on to the hope that there is always more, for it is from this place that we come to know the invitation, the gift, that we are invited to participate in. “We are born at a time when the future of life needs us, and this is best viewed in a way that lets it sober us, yes, but also such that we become inspired, not merely passive apathetic consumers, but caring, capable, creative participants in the greatest dramatic moment of our evolutionary movement so far... The tension of that pressure is not a curse, but a gift. It is a call to everything that’s best in us.”[1]
One of these gifts is the unfolding sense of being led to greater connectivity. With science revealing the interconnectivity of all things, with evolution telling us that we are all descended from stardust, no longer can we pretend that we are separate, that somehow humanity lives disconnected from our environment. With 13.8 billion years of wisdom inside us, it is no surprise that creative ways to heal the planet are emerging at this time. We are indeed a most creative species – maybe this is the time when we need to ask what it is that we want to create and what resources do we need for this to happen?
And then there’s God.
Rob Bell, in his book What We Talk About When We Talk About God[2] details his core premise that God is with us, for us and ahead of us. Certainly we commit ourselves to a life of relationship with the God who is intimately concerned with emanating love into our lives, who knows us and wills the best for us in all situations. This is the God who is with us and for us. Where Rob Bell takes us is into the realm of remembering that God is also ahead of us, that every step into the future has already been visited by God. This is extraordinary; that the God who is so intimate in love has already become present in the future. This invites me to a confidence in the future. Herein lies hope, that God has already entered the place I have yet to inhabit and filled this future with the desire for me, for each of us, for our planet, to come to fullness of life.
That God is already present in the future means that I have confidence in committing myself to works of social justice and earth restoration. On a more intimate scale, I can wake up each day knowing that I am accompanied by the God who wants me to have confidence that already the future is of love. My work is to get on with using the gifts that God has given me – to be love.
As for Advent, it seems to me that at every step we are heralding in the God who is already here. If John the Baptist ever asked himself what it was that the Divine wants to be revealed through him, I imagine that it was to tell the world that hope has entered, for in Jesus we have the exemplar of the human journey as one of birth and death, but that death has within it the seeds of rebirth, of resurrection.
Of course there is uncertainty in what the future will be. Times are dire. That does not mean that God is not with us, for us and ahead of us. Advent is a time of heralding in the news that hope holds the space for transformation to occur. “I’ve come to understand uncertainty as a necessary condition for hope... The future is going to look very different, and I can’t tell you how, but we’re going to have to go through this together and figure it out and create it... It’s unsettling, and it’s difficult work, we’re bad at it, and that is the grounds for transformation... You cannot transform if you stay the same.”[3]
Welcome to Advent. Welcome to the invitation to transform, to spread out your cloak and see just how far it can expand. Hold on to hope.
[1]Terry Patten, ‘Radical Adaptation’, in Dumbo Feather: Our Evolutionary Moment, Issue 61: 2019, 13.
[2]What We Talk About When We Talk About God Paperback – Deckle Edge, February 4, 2014
[3]Laurie Mazur, ‘Susanne Moser Holds Hope Lightly’, in Dumbo Feather: Our Evolutionary Moment, Issue 61, 2019, 85.
*Dr Connelly is also a retreat leader, pilgrimage leader and professional Celtic harpist. Handbook of Hope: Emerging Stories Beyond a Disintegrating World, is available for $15 (+ $3pp) through cathy@cathy.com.au
*You can find out more about The Living Well Centre for Christian Spirituality at: http://www.livingwellcentre.org.au/about-us/