Dum Spiro, Spero (26/30)

     Last year, for the first time, I heard about the One Word Project, in which people are encouraged to pick one word to focus on for the entire year, rather than simply making New Year's Resolutions. This discovery was rather serendipitous as I happened to find myself focusing on a word as the new year began, and it was certainly one that held great meaning for me throughout 2015. The word was hope.  

     When I first felt that I was given the word "hope" for 2015, I had no idea what that would actually look like. I wrote at that time that, "this year I will try to focus on hope: hope that light will conquer darkness; hope that love will break down barriers; hope that people will realize the consequences of their actions on others, the world, and themselves; hope that injustice will die; hope that even the hard days will serve their purpose and trials will produce character. Hope that I can rejoice and give thanks in all circumstances." While I may have initially been focusing on the need for hope and global and social issues, it was the last two sentences that ended up being the most relevant to my life in 2015. I'm an optimist by nature, and I can usually find the silver lining to most problems, but the thing is, finding hope in the short-term crises can often be much easier than preserving hope in the day to day of longer trials. This last year was rough in many ways, from the end of my didactic year and the transition to the non-stop craziness of rotations, to greater awareness of my own weaknesses and struggles (both professionally and personally), and sometimes, at least when it came to my own dreams and desires, the biggest challenge could be simply knowing what I should hope for. Where did my own dreams end and God's plans begin? I still don't have clear answers to that question. 

     In 2015 I learned to be flexible on with my schedule, recognized how characteristics I'd never thought of as weaknesses could negatively affect me on rotations, and even improved some relationships and character traits that have been issues in the past, but at the end of the year I wasn't sure how much I'd succeeded when it came to learning about and growing in hope. I still think I'm a hopeful person, but I recognize that some days I have to fight for hope. Some days hope is just a tiny candle, flickering in a dark void, and that flame has to be protected and encouraged. Sometimes hope isn't even something you can hold and protect, but is the faintest light off in the distance that you know exists, but cannot see clearly, if at all. Sometimes it's a fight simply to create hope in the first place. The book of Romans talks about the creation of hope, and, much as I hate to acknowledge it, hope can have its origins in suffering. Paul says, "...we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (Rom. 5:3-5). I'm still not sure if the difficult days of 2015 have yet produced endurance in me (let alone character or hope), and I don't think I have all the answers to my questions about hope and what I can hope for. Instead, I find myself living in the tension, admitting that, for right now the answers are hidden and I must proceed with just enough guidance for each individual step, trying to breathe out fear and anxiety, and breathe in hope. It can be frustrating, exhausting, and confusing, but it's comforting to know I'm not alone; I'm not the only person who has felt this way. I find myself praying the prayer of Thomas Merton who said,

     "My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone."

     I'm not sure what the word for 2016 will be, or even if there will be one. It hasn't been revealed to me either way. Maybe it will be hope again. Maybe I'll see it from another angle, maybe I'll get answers to my questions, or maybe I'll have to repeat the lessons of 2015 over again. I don't know. I do know that, whether my word this year is "hope," "tension," "act," or "faith," hope is something I want to continue to foster and grow for the rest of my life, no matter what comes. It is on this note that I want to close this post with a poem by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. For most of his life Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor who spoke out about the dangers of leader worship, the indignities of racial inequality (both in the US and Germany), and how the church could neither compromise its doctrines nor turn a blind eye to injustice in order to gain political safety. Bonhoeffer was one of the first people to both recognize the dangers of Hitler, and to speak out loudly against him in protest. Although very resistant to the idea that murder could ever be necessary, Bonhoeffer eventually became part of the German resistance and a member of a group whose plot to save Germany, and the world, hinged on the death of Hitler. It was for his involvement in this plot that Bonhoeffer was imprisoned and eventually executed at Flossenburg concentration camp, just weeks before it was liberated by the Allies. Bonhoeffer had been a prolific writer his entire life (most of his works are now considered Christian classics), and he remained a writer even during his many months in prison. This poem was written in a letter to Bonhoeffer's family in December 1944, less than four months before his death. Given the context, I cannot help but be impressed, and encouraged, by Bonhoeffer's thankful acceptance even of the "heavy cup, the bitter one, of sorrow" and by his ability to still end with hope, even in some of the darkest of times. 

Von guten Mächten

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Translation found in I Want to Live These Days With You

Surrounded by good powers, faithful and still,

wonderfully protected and comforted -

in this way I want to live these days with you

and go with you into a new year.

The old year still wants to torment our hearts; 

the heavy burden of evil days still holds us down.

O Lord, give our frightened souls

the salvation for which you created us.

And if you hand us the heavy cup, the bitter one,

of sorrow, filled to the highest brim,

then we take it thankfully, without trembling,

from your good and loving hand.

Yet if you want to give us joy once again

in this world and its sun's bright light,

then we want to remember what has passed, 

and then our life belongs fully to you.

Today, let the candles glow warm and bright

that you brought into our darkness,

and if it can be, bring us together again!

We know your light shines in the night.

When now the profound stillness spreads round us,

let us hear that full sound of the world

that widens invisibly all around us,

the high hymn of praise of all your children.

Wonderfully secured by good powers,

we confidently await what may come.

God is with us in the evening and the morning,

and most certainly in each new day.

First Week of Advent: Hope

     I always look forward to Christmas, and the whole holiday season, but this year I found myself particularly looking forward to Advent itself -to joining with Christians everywhere and throughout the ages in eager anticipation of our coming Christ. I was genuinely excited for this day to come. So, out of my excitement, I decided to try something new this year. Each week I'll post a (hopefully) short reflection on that week's theme, as well as a picture and playlist that fits. Today's post will be a tad longer since I thought it might be a good idea to give a very quick overview of the Advent season for anyone who isn't familiar with it. 
      Advent is a part of the Christian church (liturgical) calendar which begins a countdown of sorts until Christmas. It officially begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas (November 30 this year), and is a season of waiting, expectation, and joy. The word "advent" means "coming" and Christians celebrate both the first coming of Christ at Christmas, as well as look forward to His second coming in the future. Each week of Advent has a particular theme. These are hope, peace (or faith), joy, and love. There is a little variation between churches as to which themes are celebrated on which weeks, but the four themes remain the same. Some Christians use an Advent wreath (made up of four candles in a circle surrounding one large candle) during this time and each week they light a new candle until Christmas day when the four outside candles and the central candle are all lit. Typically each candle in the wreath represents one of the themes of Advent, but they can also be associated with different characters in the Christmas story, such as the prophets, wisemen, shepherds, angels, and Mary and Joseph. The candles help serve as a reminder not simply of the themes of the week or that Christmas is approaching, but that the first Christmas was the moment when Christ, our Light, became human and entered our world, becoming the fulfillment of the name "Emmanuel" -"God with us. 
     Hopefully this quick overview helped. Now on to week one: hope.

     Advent is a season of waiting, and I find it fitting that the theme of the first week is hope. Surely waiting, which can be rather difficult, feels more worthwhile and endurable when there is hope that someday the wait will be over. The thing is though, hope is not simply optimism or wishful thinking. It may often be used that way today, but hope is more accurately seen as the expectation of something, specifically something you know will happen. Merriam-Webster says the definition of the verb "to hope" is "to expect with confidence." On this first day of Advent, we are reminded of the Jews who waited many centuries for their coming Messiah. They could wait with hope, because they knew that God fulfills His promises, but this did not necessarily mean that the waiting was easy. 

      The carol commonly associated with this first week is "O Come, O Come Emmanuel." The first verse speaks from the perspective of the Israelites, "groaning" in exile while waiting for their Messiah. The exile the song speaks of was not even the end of their waiting as it was followed by approximately 4 centuries of seeming silence from God. I guarantee that there were days when it was very difficult to hold on to hope, to trust in the promise that the Messiah would come. I'm sure some gave up; some decided that they'd been waiting too long. The dark beauty of this carol, which is written in a minor key, speaks to their anguish. For others though, perhaps it was only the hope of the coming Messiah that kept them going day to day. Ultimately the chorus reminds us that the Messiah did indeed come, and this is cause for great rejoicing. However, to get to the celebration, you have to make it through the groaning.
     This week as Advent begins, the story of the Jews reminds me of three lessons I want to remember this season. 1) Sometimes waiting is hard. There's no way around it. There will be times of tears and anguish and groaning. There is comfort for the trying times though when we know that our hope has a firm foundation. 2) Hope doesn't necessarily mean that we get exactly what we want. The Jews of Jesus' time expected a Warrior King who'd overthrow the Romans and release them from oppression. They did not expect a unknown peasant from a backwater town. 3) Some things are worth the wait. Jesus may not have matched the expectations of the Jews, but what Jesus brought was so much more beautiful, and certainly much better. Rather than simply taking care of the immediate physical salvation of the Jews, Jesus came to bring them eternal, spiritual salvation. Furthermore, the salvation Jesus brought was not just for the Jews, but for the whole world. It was the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham that "all nations on earth will be blessed" through his offspring (Gen. 22:18). The realization of the hope of the Jews, ultimately brought hope for everyone, and that is indeed reason for rejoicing. 

     If you're looking for suggestions of ways to celebrate this Christmas season, Rachel Held Evans has  26 Ideas for Advent. Besides this post, I'm going to try doing a daily devotional this year, like this one from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary or this one from Luther Seminary. For anyone wanting to know more about the liturgical calendar, here's Mark D. Robert's Introduction to the Christian Year.