Death of Hope

I recently sat physically-distanced along the lakefront with a friend discussing the start of another school year. Not being directly in the classroom, I was eager to hear about how she was wrapping her head around all the layers of important dispositions, postures, and concepts that have been raised in our world as of late and how she planned to engage her students in a virtual context with it all. I probed about anti-racism, anti-capitalism, mutual kindness (the mask controversy), democratic citizenship, etc.

I was not met with the response I expected. There seemed to be no consideration, or rather, there was no energy and space for these issues; issues I felt to be critically urgent and needed to be brought to the forefront of our students’ minds. I was confused and a bit frustrated with her response. While sitting in those feelings, I asked questions, lots of them. In turn, she asked why I would prioritize it. I expressed my belief that bringing these concepts into the classroom is our social responsibility as educators - to make information available and to provide our young people with the space and opportunity to learn, process, and step into roles to be change agents in our society. I shared these convictions with a sense of urgency; then she looked at me and replied, “That’s the difference, Sonia. You have hope. I just don’t have hope anymore in our society.”

And while she framed my hope as something encouraging and necessary, I began to wonder if my hope was possibly naive and desperate. Because while I cling onto hope, I understand my friend’s exasperation. 

Then Jacob Blake was murdered. In front of his children. And Black Lives Matter protestors were targeted and killed. And justice has yet to be seen for Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, and too many more, meanwhile more lives - Miguel Vega, Daniel Prude,… are added to the slew of injustices plaguing Black and Brown people. Every time I listen to the news, I hear about injustices perpetuated and perpetrated by people in power, leaders who only take interest in the few rather than all of whom their role is charged to care for. The death toll due to Covid19 continues to rise and healthcare systems are stretched thin to care for those affected, even those who find themselves at hospitals after refusing to take known precautions. 

I physically begin to feel the weight of our world’s messiness in my back and shoulders; my heart feels tight and I vacillate between immense fury and deep sorrow. This place I am at is not new. In fact, I have been here many times before, like a cycle, that begins when I feel overwhelmed and lose sight of my well of hope which stirs my soul to live with purpose. Then, I get further away from that posture from which I try to exist. Now, I usually manage to find a way to muster back to the point where I can re-ground myself. But then I read this line in Austin Channing Brown’s book, “I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness”:

“The death of hope begins in fury, ferocious as a wildfire. It feels uncontrollable, disastrous at first, as if it will destroy everything in the vicinity - but in the midst of the fury, I am forced to find my center. What is left when hope is gone? What is left when the source of my hope has failed? Each death of hope has been painful and costly. But in the mourning there always rises a new clarity about the world, about the Church, about myself, about God.”

I fully recognize my lived experience is incomparable to that of my Black sisters’ experiences. In referring to this quote, however, I appreciate the precision and depth of this feeling which she puts words to, a feeling I can only attempt to empathize and personally understand a skimmed surface of. 

Austin Channing Brown provides the missing piece for how I need to approach this experience: it is not a cycle; it is a linear, perhaps sloped, progression that involves the death of hope. I am not trying to conjure hope out of its little remains. No, I must put it to bed, to its resting place. 

And what is left when hope is gone? I am forced to reexamine the vessel which contained the hope - ME. What is in my core? What are my truths? How does my soul ache or rejoice as I engage with life and the present? I find myself reflecting on my faith, my safe spaces, my life-giving rhythms... And in this reexamination process, I am propelled to take a beat and recenter myself, my soul, and intentionally grieve and mourn. In doing so, I can look back out into our world, as yucky, aggravating, and heartbreaking as it is, and creatively imagine the diverse ways we can and must work towards equity, justice, and peace. And as I re-engage, I find a new hope, and I believe that change is possible. 

This is where I resume my journey, with the new hope, and I continue on in my [positive] slope, not being naive however that there will soon be another death of hope. Yet at that time, I will embrace it fiercely rather than desire for things to “go back to…” And instead, I will:

 

Take a beat. 

Grieve. 

Reexamine the vessel, my core. 

Look forward. 

Rebirth hope.

And implement into actions. 

I will choose hope.

These pictures are from a recent trip I took, which was  planned but also timely. It allowed me to 'take a beat.' I removed myself from the sounds, in particular the news, of day to day life, and frankly, allowed myself to mourn the state of things. In that emptiness, however, I was also reminded of God's ingenuity with the nature that surrounded me (& that His hand is also with His people and me). Because of this allotted space & time, I step forward with hope & anticipation.