Hope in Light of Faith and the 2020 Election

by Vanessa Sadler

Atop a bookcase in our bedroom room sits a commissioned piece of artwork marking a significant season in my life.  A silhouetted bird against a palette of sunrise colors and a hand lettered quote by Emily Dickenson reads:

“Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the sings the tune

Without the words

And never stops at all.”

I have a love/hate relationship with hope.  

On one hand hope fuels me to meet creative deadlines, stirred by the notion that my words will fall on ears to hear and eyes to see. Hope ignites passion to sit with clients who are filled with rumblings of despair as they look over the debris of trauma in their lives. Hope gives birth to desire and longing for repaired relationships. 

On the other hand, hope is insomnia, unsettling me at night as I agonize over the cultural experiences our children are navigating. 

Hope mocks me as our family awaits justice for Breonna Taylor’s murder. 

Hope churns bile in my stomach as I pass a group of counter-protestors with confederate flags sewn into their clothes like second skin. 

And I remember, hope deferred makes the heart sick. 

Elsewhere in our home is a jar filled with folded pages noting memorable moments of the year to date.  A New Year’s Eve tradition of collecting and looking back over the events of the previous year, drinking in the adventures — sometimes laughing, sometimes weeping.  

I imagine by now our collective experience could fill an ocean of jars with memories of 2020 — sometimes laughing, often times weeping.  If we’ve heard it once we’ve heard it a hundred times: This year hasn’t been what any of us hoped it would be. Cancelled graduations, weddings and sports seasons.  Grieving and burying our loved ones from a distance. Violence inflicted on Black and Brown bodies boiling over into the streets in protest. 

We hoped for more. We hoped for better. 

To hope for something — be it a trip to the grocery store without a mask, school in person or the eradication of systems that oppress the most marginalized among us — is to name and possess a memory of the future that is forged from living into the tension of what has been and what is.  It is a memory imbedded in our core that dares to dream into what is possible.  

And yet, hope does not occur in a vacuum.  

Hope is sneaky.  Unless we take time to slow down we may miss the fact that hope is impossible without faith.  We cannot separate the two.

Now faith is the substance of what we hope for, the evidence of realities not seen. 

(Tree of Life Version)

Faith is the meaningful summoning to mind of the past. Faith demands the careful consideration of what has been, in light of the present, and it requires the marking of both the past and present, unto the future.  Faith makes sense of the story that brought us to this place in time, orienting us and calling us to lament. \

And make no mistake, America is groaning for lament.

Imagine for a moment if, in the darkest part of the night, all remembrance of the previous day were erased.  No reminders of deadlines missed.  No anxiety from yesterday’s news cycle. No emotional hangover from an argument with your partner. 

Imagine, equally, that you have no memory of conversations with friends and family over a meal, or the breeze on your skin as it’s warmed by the sun. No memory of the sound of water rippling or crashing to the shore.  No lingering smell of the chocolate cake baked with love and connection the night before.  No surviving comfort of the kindness received in a stranger’s smile. 

No memory of the previous day’s dawn.  

You are without promise, without compass, without the surety under foot that tomorrow will in fact arrive.  This is where many of us sit currently, with anxiety and depression rising steadily from quarantines, social and racial unrest and political upheaval. 

America and the earth at large are wailing for remembrance and lament, a deep travail of objection to our arthritic grip on narratives that no longer serve the collective whole of humanity.  

In the darkest night of the soul you are also without faith.  Faith for the mourning dove’s welcome of first light. Faith for the last note of the cricket’s song, bowing out and giving way to the heron’s cry.

How will you respond?

I believe America can be better than it is at present; help my unbelief that seeks to lead me deeper into vowing that things will never change, a vow that will cripple me to inaction. 

I believe American democracy can function in a way that benefits the greater good of all its citizens; help my unbelief when I focus only on where we are, failing to remember where we have come from. 

— Vanessa Sadler

Photo Credits: Gigi McMurray

Bio: 

After years of incorporating the Enneagram into my own spiritual journey I became certified and began ABIDE, where I offer trauma-informed Enneagram guidance, as well as collaborative Spiritual Practices and Integrative Story Work.  I have completed a Level I Certificate in Narrative Focused Trauma Care from The Allender Center within the The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology and am currently enrolled in Level II.  I am also pursuing certification to become a Spiritual Director.​  Using the Enneagram, Story Engagement and Spiritual Practices, my desire is to come alongside you as a guide on the path toward deeper abiding, and to support and encourage you as you enter into the fullness you were created for.’

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IG: @abidinginstory