"Hope has two beautiful daughters..."

Anger, Courage, & All Those Big Feelings

Dear Friends,

I’m brighter this week than when I wrote you last. The kind of bright that almost wants to begin with that phrase, much cursed of late, “I hope this finds you well.” Look, right about now, I hope this finds you… OK. I hope this finds you carrying an ember of joy in the midst of the darkness.

My joy this week: Kate McKinnon’s new character on SNL, Dr. Wayne Wenodis - and her rather unplanned breakdown in the midst of it. As she says, it’s just a relief to plays a character who knows something in this time of uncertainty. So, I hope you have something that is making you laugh. Because joy doesn’t need to be big, or the same as happiness or wellbeing, though we often make the mistake of of equating or aligning them - and that’s got me thinking of two other things that are not the same: hope and optimism.

There are plenty of reasons to be thinking about hope, of course, but I’m thinking about the language of hope because of something the Irish poet Pádraig Ó Tuama spoke about at Evolving Faith. Ó Tuama spoke to us about anger, something we rarely think about alongside hope, but he pointed out that our failure to do so might be a mistake because, as St. Augustine of Hippo wrote,

Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.

When Ó Tuama was living through some of the darkest times in his life, through conversion therapy and exorcisms, he was understandably angry. But, he said to us, “Although I didn’t know it yet, my anger was one of the works of hope.”

Really, is it worth being angry if, somewhere deep down, you don’t also have a little bit of hope? Why bother being angry if you’ve given up entirely? But, we can’t just sit by with our anger, not if we’re serious about hope. We have to act, and that’s where things get hard and messy and scary, and why we need all the courage we can come by.

I can’t tell you where to find courage, not because I don’t have any ideas or answers or any courage myself, but because we all find it in different places. These words, though, unsurprisingly brings to mind Psalm 121:

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
    From where does my help come?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
    who made heaven and earth.

3 He will not let your foot be moved;
    he who keeps you will not slumber.
4 Behold, he who keeps Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The Lord is your keeper;
    the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
6 The sun shall not strike you by day,
    nor the moon by night.

7 The Lord will keep you from all evil;
    he will keep your life.
8 The Lord will keep
    your going out and your coming in
    from this time forth and forevermore.

This was a verse I clung to when I was younger, a verse of treasured accompaniment, that meant I never had to be alone. It meant I was watched over - but it didn’t mean I should stay at home, so to speak - or else what would there be for God to protect me from? These days, though, I’m also a fan of the for KING & COUNTRY take on these assurances in their song “Fix My Eyes” -

As adults, of course, we tend to get very philosophical about things like hope and courage and even anger. Kids, though, they can be clear-eyed about these things in ways that help us big people break through the noise, so I encourage you to ask the small folks in your life these questions:

What makes you feel angry?
and
What makes you feel brave?

Who knows what you might learn from their answers.

We are slowly moving into shorter days and closer to Advent, that special time of hope. I’m brainstorming what that will look like for my congregation. I hope you’ll share with me what it looks like for your family or community.

As always, drop by the Wiggles & Wonder Facebook and Twitter pages for more resources and posts.

Be well. Or at least be hopeful, in all of the ways that takes shape,
A. Bird