Article Published in the Missoulian on May 6, 2023
Hope as resistance is a phrase that has been spinning through my mind recently.
I sit across from a client in a local coffee shop as tears run down their face. We have met for months, and the tears fall whenever their children come up or as they remember the years of excellent and vital work they did in their profession. Looking ahead, they wonder if they will keep their housing, find employment, or ever walk around without the hyper-anxiety of what others think of them plaguing their mind. Why? Because like other clients, this one narrates their encounter with the justice system and the daily struggle to live in the aftermath of an arrest. As they talk, questions of hope come up. Do you have hope for me? Do you honestly believe God loves me? Is there a future for me? Why would I keep living?
These sacred spaces reveal humanity without pretense. They also demand questions of hope. In the Christian church calendar, we are in the season of hope, Eastertide. We speak of new life and forgiveness, a world turned upside down by the death and resurrection of Jesus. In the Northern Hemisphere, we celebrate the breaking forth of springtime as flowers burst from the earth and display their color. My client, however, still feels buried in the winter soil, with no visible signs of hope or new possibilities for life.
I recently read Wendy Farley’s book “Tragic Vision and Divine Compassion: A Contemporary Theodicy.” She writes, “Resistance is the holy ground wherein divine presence is known and experienced.” In considering this, I hear that resistance is the sacred space of hope. Resistance is an active hope, lived hope, something I can do in the face of hopelessness. Anytime I act toward life, love, justice, joy, compassion and beauty for more people and more of the cosmos, I resist despair and activate hope.
As I contemplated this, I found myself at the piano playing music I learned decades ago. One such song is “Song of Hope” by hymn writer and activist Jim Strathdee. The first verse narrates how I feel many days, “When the darkness overwhelms us to dim our sight and our mind When all roads lead to confusion and hope’s impossible to find.” Thankfully, the second part of each verse speaks to an active resistant hope, “Free our arms for action, reaching for another’s hand, free our feet for marching or to boldly make a stand.” I have witnessed this recently through those who testify in Helena and the marching for Queer Joy through Missoula. I hear it at memorial services at the Poverello, declaring that each life and death matters. I also see it across from me as my client freely cries, asking me to hold onto hope when they cannot. As a community chaplain, I see hope lived out by challenging a system that breeds despair. May I not lose heart in resistance. May I not lose heart in hope.