Oh! May the God of green hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit, will brim over with hope! ~ Romans 15: 13 (The Message)
One of my best friends from college was Wang Chin from Taipei. Wang was seven or eight years older than me, and he had a “master” growing up who taught him how to nurture plants from a seed, how to cook elaborate meals, and how to tell someone’s fortune by reading the palm of their hand. Wang could ask his “master” any question and his teacher would share the wisdom of years with him.
Wang was wise beyond his years, and he leaned on me to explain the nuances of the English language and American culture which was often comical. I tried to explain to Wang the difference between “yawl” (we lived in the Panhandle of Texas) and “you guys.” I told him “Give me a minute” might be a few seconds or thirty minutes.
I taught Wang how to drive and he flunked his driver’s test. I thought it was hilarious and Wang said, “Craig, you suppose to teach me, and you failed! I have never flunked a test! You teach me!” I said, “Wang, I ain’t your teacher.”
“Ain’t? What Ain’t?” Wang did pass his driver’s test the second time around.
Once Wang asked me, “Craig, why do you Americans always ask, ‘How are you?’ and everyone says ‘Good’? How can everyone be good?”
“We don’t really want to know how someone is Wang. It’s just a greeting like ‘Hello.” “I want to say, ‘How much time do you have? Let me tell you how I am,’” Wang said. “Naw, naw, just say good.” “Naw? What naw?” Wang pulled out his ever-present dictionary.
Today, I would tell Wang that Americans, me included, are often optimists. Every little thing will be all right. Harvard professor Peter Gomes in his book The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus writes that in the 1920’s French psychologist Monsieur Coue had nearly everyone convinced that “Every day in every way I am getting better and better.” We are GOOD!
“The power of positive thinking is essential to the American creed. The constitutionally guaranteed right to the pursuit of happiness was fueled by optimism. Optimism and opportunity went hand in hand,” says Gomes. “Optimism was as American as apple pie.”
Are we optimistic or pessimistic? Is there a difference between optimism and hope?
When I graduated from college I moved to Wichita, Kansas, and Wang moved back to Taiwan. I promised him I would visit his home “someday.” “Someday? When is someday, Craig?”
My dad told me to fix the flat spare in my Mustang before I moved or buy a new spare. I thought Dad was being very negative. I told him, “I’m not gunna get a flat tire.” That May, in the middle of a violent thunderstorm with the tornado sirens blaring in Wichita, I got a flat tire.
I walked in the driving rain to a gas station and called Uncle Ron. “Why don’t you have a spare?” he asked. I knew better than to say, “Uh… because I’m an optimist…” Uncle Ron shared some of the most poignant words in the English language with me. Wang would have had lots of questions.
What is wrong with optimism? Gomes writes, “Optimism seduces us into looking at the bright side at the risk of failing to take reality seriously. Voltaire in 1739 wrote that optimism is the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong.”
Flat tires don’t lie, or Uncle Ron who drove to pick up his optimistic nephew in the middle of a tornado warning.
Someone asked the great theologian Henri Nouwen, “Are you an optimist?” He replied, “No, not naturally, but that isn’t important. I live in hope, not optimism.”
Giant waves of optimism and pessimism are moving through our society today. We can feel the difference in energy. I plan to ride the optimistic wave as long as possible; it feels good. I might dance to a drumline and raise a toast to peace on earth. Maybe I’ll raise my hands and sing “hallelujah!”
Father Ron Rolheiser says, “What’s important for a community (a person) of faith is not optimism or pessimism, but something else, namely hope.”
“Hope in gospel faith is not just a vague feeling that things will work out, for it is evident that things will not work out. Rather, hope is the conviction, against a great deal of data, that God is tenacious and persistent in overcoming the anger, the hate, and the injustice of the world, that God intends joy and peace,” says Old Testament scholar Waler Brueggemann. The Living Christ of “green hope” turns the sadness of the world toward joy, the lost are found, and the displaced are brought home again, says Brueggemann. It will take a minute or so though.
Grace is slowly renewing the world. Love persists forever. “Hope is the patient and trustful willingness to live without full closure, without resolution, and still be content and even happy,” says Rohr. In active hope, we trust that God’s presence, love, and mercy are working through the world and us. With hope, we plant the seeds of heaven on earth in the middle of chaos.
Even though Wang and I were naively optimistic, Wang did not become the president of Taiwan and I did not play for the Dallas Cowboys and retire at age thirty-two. Reality can shatter our optimism. I do carry a good spare though because we never know what circumstances life will bring.
More importantly, we can live with muscular hope. God’s Love and Grace is the glue that holds us together in the sun and the rain.
May we live with Hope that sadness turns towards joy, the lost are found, and the displaced are brought home again. May the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit fill our hearts with a never-ending Hope that does not disappoint us (see Romans 5:5).
Blessings and peace,
Craig