Monday Morning Musing: Those Eternal Optimists

Yesterday, as Advent dawned in the Church, our congregation gathered under an Advent theme to help guide us through the season: Choosing Hope. When it was crafted we liked the sense of choosING as an ongoing act. And hope as opposed to optimism. I had fun preaching the difference between hope and optimism and even worked in a BAMA football reference! They were warned about this when they called me.

In addition to being a deeply faithful and loving congregation, they are a congregation filled with retired pastors and theologians and those held in high esteem by the Church and her agencies. I try not to be too aware of this when sermon-crafting.

This morning one of those lovely people sent me a quote that related beautifully to my sermon - I was surprised and delighted and wish I had known of it as I wrote. In this first week of Advent, it brings a good word:

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A quote from Czech playwright and President Vaclav Havel when he was asked, “Do you see a grain of hope anywhere in the 1980s?”

"The most convinced materialist and atheist may have more of this genuine, transcendentally rooted inner hope (this is my view, not his) than ten metaphysicians together. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. In short, I think that the deepest and most important form of hope, the only one that can keep us above water and urge us to good works, and the only true source of the breathtaking dimension of the human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from “elsewhere.” It is also this hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless is ours do, here and now."

— (Vaclav Havel, “The Politics of Hope” in Disturbing the Peace, Vintage, 1990, pp.181-82)