A student asked me, "What gives you hope?" It was the second time someone of that generation has asked that, and I responded that I wasn't going to answer with any platitudes or take the easy way out. The answer was that I honestly had no answer. And I have pondered that since.
My answer now would be that hope is not an emotion, it is a choice. I hope because I have a conviction to do so. I hope because of a sermon here, a friendship there, a good deed done, a lesson learned. I hope because of an accumulation of experiences, some in community, some solitary, that have been lived in that hope. There is an echo of the catechism here, I don't think I made this up myself. The old way of expressing it was that hope is a theological virtue, and as such it grows when it is practiced. I'm not sure how that sounds to a twenty-something. But it was true in the sixties when I was born, it was true in the eighties when I was a twenty-something, it was true after September 11 and it is true now.
With war, inflation, uncertainty and disconnection threading through our thoughts, all I can conclude is that hope points us in the direction that I think is right.
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