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![]() My growing experience of hope means I fear less and dance more. Christian hope is wonderful, it is mystical. ![]() Hope is the essence of the spiritual life, not optimism. I am discovering that Jesus' followers are called to be people of hope and build Christian communities that are alive with a palpable, vibrant hope. This means that even in those grim movements when I am left traumatised at the sickening sight of my scars, because I have hope, I can still experience the nearness of God. Jesus' hope seemed to rest upon the idea that, whatever the outcome may be, God will be with us at all times, in all places and in all things. Rather Jesus spoke about a hope that is not based on whether things will get better or worse. Nouwen suggested Jesus was not an optimist. After all, the essence of the gospel is finding hope through the suffering and death of Jesus. This is because I will never know what hope is until I have been overcome by anguish. I should not run from, or deny, the reality of cancer in my life. In fact, Nouwen thought that to embrace hope I need to firstly let go of my optimism and face despair. The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands. The optimist speaks about concrete changes in the future. Hope is the trust that God will fulfil God's promises to us in a way that leads us to true freedom. Optimism is the expectation that things will get better. Optimism and hope are vastly different attitudes. There was, however, alluring talk about Christian hope. Few believers ever talked about optimism as pertinent to the Christian faith. Surrounded by tapers and Bibles and prayer books I plead with God to restore my optimism so I can feel better, happier.īut as I examine the Scriptures, as I read words penned by the saints long ago, I find that within the Christian tradition optimism has never been a high priority. I live in a manse situated on church property, and so each morning I trudge across the carpark to the chapel in search of peace. So I do what I've done all my life, I search for God's presence. Pessimism is antagonistic it keeps me awake at night. ![]() It tells me that I will certainly die quickly and excruciatingly and tragically. To be optimistic is to expect life to be ultimately kind.īut as night settles in I find myself enveloped by pessimism once again. When I'm faced with the prospect of cancer invading my body, optimism says the chances are it won't happen. Optimism arranges life in a way that allows me to say things will get better. I eat too much chocolate, and bang things loudly on the kitchen counter as I prepare dinner.īut I know I can't stay in such a state and soon I begin to embrace optimism. I'm still in my third decade of life I don't know how to live with the shadow of death hovering over me.īesieged by self-pity, I dawdle home from my appointment with the specialist. He tells me that there is an even higher chance I will get more tumours. He tells me that there is a chance, albeit small, the cancer could metastasise and I could die. I now have the arduous task of attending appointments with a specialist who checks my skin and lymph nodes for any signs of more melanoma. Or I catch glimpses of my crimson cuts in the mirror. I shower and my hands run over my lumpy scars. I've had two cancerous tumours removed and I simply cannot forget about them. It remained his home until his death in 1996.Death lingers ever so close to my house, to me. It’s here where Nouwen found the kind of community he had been searching for all of his life. In 1986, he accepted the position of pastor at L’Arche Daybreak, a community for people with intellectual disabilities in Richmond Hill, Ontario. Yet the place that influenced Henri most profoundly was the antithesis of status and influence. In addition to writing, Henri had a distinguished teaching career at some of the most prestigious and powerful post-secondary institutions in America, including the University of Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard. ![]() Through Henri, they discovered that, despite their own brokenness, they too were deeply loved by God. When Henri embraced his own emotional and spiritual frailty as a conduit for discovering his status as God’s beloved, readers responded. His honesty was both enthralling and unsettling. Henri was an ordained priest and a gifted preacher who embodied the inherent incongruities of integrating life and spirit.
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