“Hope is holding in creative tension all that is, with everything that could and should be, and each day taking some action to narrow the distance between the two.”
—Parker J. Palmer
“May you live in interesting times” is supposedly an ancient curse, although its origins are foggy. Still, we know why it is called a curse. “Interesting times” are times when much happens, when much is needed, when much is called for. “Interesting times” sometimes tear us apart, sometimes bring us together, almost always challenge us to be and to do more or better.
Friends, we are living in interesting times.
I may be tempted to think that our current interesting times arrived in 2020 along with a worldwide pandemic, international economic crises and global civil unrest. But 2020 is the new 2019—which a mere six months ago was reviled as the “dumpster fire” year. In other words, these interesting times have been coming upon us for a while. In fact, all the way back in May of 2015, Pope Francis addressed an audience of children of the Peace Factory, a nonprofit building relationships toward peace in the Middle East, saying:
“We are all equal—all of us—but this truth is not recognized, this equality is not recognized, and for this reason some people are, we can say, happier than others. But this is not a right! We all have the same rights. When we do not see this, society is unjust. It does not follow the rule of justice, and where there is no justice, there cannot be peace. I would like to repeat this with you: where there is no justice, there is no peace!”
—Pope Francis
Where there is no justice there is no peace. We’ve been hearing these words a lot recently. But what do they really mean? What do they say about our way of being in this world? These questions I must answer in my own heart—and we must also find a way to answer them together.
As Parker Palmer says: on one hand all that IS, on the other hand all that SHOULD be. And in between the two, the space we hold for hope.
I invite you to listen to If Not Now by Carrie Newcomer, a hopeful song about finding our way through these interesting times together.
—Jenifer Hanson, Prairiewoods director