Passion for What is Possible

Devotion for Being Apart - June 11

I will share a devotion Sundays, and Wednesdays through Fridays.

- Kara

David Steindl-Rast, in Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer, calls hope, "opennesss for a future that does not come later."

He says,

Some people imagine that hope is the highest degree of optimism, a kind of super-optimism.... A far more accurate picture would be the hope happens when the bottom drops out of pessimism.  We have nowhere to fall but into the ultimate reality of God's motherly caring.

He goes on to say:

On Easter morning the angel announces the resurrection of Jesus, not by saying, "Here he is; he has come back to life!" No. Looking for him in that way would mean looking for the living one among the dead. He is not here. Nor is he alive with our aliveness that is closer to death than to life. "He is risen" runs the good news, and "He is not here." All we can experience from the perspective of our deathbound living is that the tomb is open and empty, a fitting image for wide open hope.

Hope shares the ambiguity of Jesus' cross. Hope is a passion for what is possible... And since patience is as contagious as impatience, it will also be our way of strengthening each other's hope.

I love the idea that hope is openness for a future that does not come later.  And that we're closer to getting there through pessimism than optimism.  And that we get there when the bottom drops out and we end up in God's motherly care.  The aliveness God brings is not the aliveness that is closer to death than to life, it's something new and different, and we sit gaping open longing for it.

I also love the idea that patience is as contagious as impatience.  (Because wow, impatience is contagious).  It invites imagining what contagious patience might look like, how we might embody that, how it might impact those around us.  And it's something we can do to strengthen each other; it's how we can go toward hope.  We don't placate ourselves or others with optimism. We let the bottom drop out of our pessimism.  We approach the empty tomb with perplexed patience, in the midst of our deathbound living, and let a wide open hope take hold in us.

 

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CONNECTING RITUAL: 

Perhaps tonight before bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we might pray this way and so join our souls with each other:

God of all times and outside all time,
cultivate in me openness for your future that doesn't come later.
Give me honesty, even unto pessimism.
Hold me in your motherly care.
Bring us through death to real aliveness. 

Teach me to recognize real aliveness,

let me be seized by passion for what is possible.

Give me contagious patience,
to wait for hope.

May a wide open hope meet me,

O Lord, I wait.

Amen.