Journa l of Religion and Health, Vol. 18, No. 1, 1979

An Anatomy of Hope

ROBERT MILLS

A B S T R A C T : This paper speaks of hope as a s tate of being tha t originates in conditions of despair and is t ransformed as a function of its part icipation in t ranscendent relationships. In t ran- scendence of self, one establishes the dynamic awareness of tha t peace which enlarges the self to accommodate life's anguish.

We should not be surprised to recognize that every now and then an event occurs that remarkably spotlights some aspects of the spiritual sensibilities of man and illustrates, on a very humble level, the exalted nature of the phenom- enon of hope. It is surprising that we, who live within the environment where these possibilities abound, should so infrequently recognize the event when it o c c u r s .

The other day a rather plainly dressed, unshaven man came into the Temple seeking, in his terms, r This kind of event occurs several t imes in the course of a week, but usually ~'help" is synonymous with money. This man was different, however, for he was seeking the kind of help that only he could find for himself. Others could, with luck and concern, perhaps st imulate the pro- cess, but he would ul t imately have to find his own help. He was in the building because his wife was terminally ill at St. Joseph Hospital. He said that he prayed daily in the hospital chapel but that day he felt that he wanted to be in a Jewish setting.

I took him to our chapel and gave him a prayer book and sat with him for awhile, establishing a human contact that assured him that others could feel the pain, and then left him with his prayer book, alone in the chapel. Some twenty minutes later he emerged with an appearance of reassurance on his face. His step was strong, and he smiled as he expressed appreciation. He left the building after telling me that this had done him much good and that he was sure it would help his wife.

Somehow I believed him. Yes, this was good for his wife, but why? On one level, we might say that his prayer was an expression of hope, in which under some miraculous circumstances there would be a direct response resulting in a fulfillment of his wishes. This would be magical thinking, and, although such thinking would be a helpful emotional experience, there would be little to satisfy one intellectually. Perhaps this man's experience of hope affected him in such a way that his becoming strengthened was now to become a part of his very bearing. Conceivably, this reawakened strength could be t ransmit ted to

Robert Mills, M.A., is Executive Director of Temple Sholom in Chicago. He is President of the Chicago Association of Temple Adminis t ra tors and a member of the Executive Board of the Na- t ional Association of Temple Administrators .

49 0022-4197/79/0100-0049500.95 �9 1979 Ins t i tu tes of Religion and Hea l th

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his wife, and in that mysterious way in which one human adds strength, courage, moral fiber to a significant other human, activate the response that helps to encourage physical recovery and/or emotional stamina. Some of his own reaffirmed hope might in this manner become hope for her also.

Hope, phrased as poetry or prayer, gives expression to pain and, in so doing, redeems the pain. The anguish becomes a fixed and limited adversary rather than an omnipresent, malevolent, lurking shadow with no boundaries.

When we can frame the cause of our "dis-ease" we domesticate it, give it boundaries so that the emotional content is manageable. In this manner, our friend was, led by despair, moved to hopefulness. Interestingly, in the field of linguistics we see the common roots of hope and hopelessness. The French words esp~rer (hope) and d~sesp~rer (despair) and the Dutch words hopen and wanhopen form this symbiotic relationship. Hope, then, is a derivative, a force that comes to birth out of the pains of despair, and it would not arise otherwise. As Paul Pruyser put it: "If reality does not first give us reasons for despairing, it cannot give us grounds for hoping. ''1

Our friend in his despair did what we always do when a noteworthy event occurs; he celebrated. He went into the chapel, prayed, and in his anguished prayer celebrated the birth of hope.

If this new-found hope was to be more than magical thinking, which looked to a miraculous immediate cure for his wife, if it was to be more than the dimension of adding hope/strength to him, which could in some measure be t ransmit ted to his wife, as important as this may be, it would have to be more than hoping for something to happen or not happen. Yet without it, nothing could happen.

The man who lives without hope is not only one who no longer gives any- thing, he is someone who has lost the power of animating the world into which he has been thrown. He is superfluous.

This animating power should not be understood in a purely subjective sense, like the faculty of making fantastic shadows move across a lifeless screen: the power of animat- ing is the power of using to the full or of lending ourselves, that is to say of allowing ourselves to be used to the full, of offering ourselves in some way to those lifegiving opportunities which the person who is really available discovers all around him like so many switches controlling the inexhaustible current flowing through our universe. 2

Hope is not an experience of having something or getting something--a cataloguing assertion of things or conditions we want, a bargaining with fate, as it were. Hope is an at t i tude or state of being. Hope is the intuitive reach of our conscious being tha t connects our whole selves, both conscious and uncon- scious, with the fullness of transcendent relationship tha t united past and future and one self with other.

In hoping, we are participants in what we hope for, thereby establishing some possibility for the realization of the hope. We project ourselves into larger realities tha t transcend our private worlds and lay claim to possibilities tha t we did not even see before. Gabriel Marcel describes the phenomenon in the following manner:

An Anatomy of Hope 51

When I tremble for my own existence, it may be that I am giving way to the simple instinct of self-preservation; it is very doubtful if one can legitimately designate by the word "hope" the kind of organic attachment to myself which makes me imagine final liberation in the midst of danger, even where the future seems most threatening. It is different... [when]... I inspire another being with love which I value and to which I respond, that will create this spiritual interconnection. The fact of the reciprocal love, the communion, will be enough to bring about a deep transformation in the nature of the bond which unites me to myself.... To love anybody is to expect something from him, something which can neither be defined nor foreseen; it is at the same time in some way to make it possible for him to fulfill this expectation. 3

Hope implies participation in tha t which is hoped for. It is nei ther an expan- sion nor a reduction of self. It is a transcendence of self. It is the state of being in which one exists in true relationship to others.

Obviously the transcendence of self is an experience of phenomena tha t are outside the range of empirical observation. It is extraterritorial in relation to the state of science existing at any given time. The experience is not one tha t falls within the criteria of science where cause and effect are easily identifiable and reproducible given the same set of circumstances, It is within the atmo- sphere established by emotional contact tha t the validity and consequences of action are fulfilled.

In our understanding of hope, we th ink of it not merely as a condition tha t transcends stoic acceptance of the apparent inevitable. It is a nonacceptance that is positive but yet distinguishable from revolt. It is not abdication or stoic acquiescence; it is not a t ightening up or inward turning concentration of the self on self. It is even more than the introduction of patience. Hope is the capacity to accept the trial as an integral part of self and, while so doing, to become at home with or domesticate the circumstances. This implies a much higher order than indifference or mere respect for what is happening. Hope always implies the superlogical connection between a return (to tha t which once was present) and acceptance of something completely new but which still grows out of and incorporates the old. Hope, in Marcel's terms, is essentially the availability of the soul tha t has entered int imately enough into the experi- ence of a connection (with the other, either human or divine) to accomplish despite one's will and rational knowledge the transcendent act-- the act tha t establishes the vital regeneration of which this experience offers both the promise and the first beginnings. 4 The pledge of regeneration is aroused by the precipitating cause--despair--and the impulse to hope is the commencement of possible regeneration.

To conceive of the notion of escape from the captivity of one's anguish is already to begin to make it possible. To be unable to conceive of the possibility is to succumb to the inevitability of the success of the adversary. Hope becomes that animat ing force of our life tha t is a response to man's successful effort to utilize relationships with the human other or the Holy other in such a manner as to be able to find his transcendent self. The transcendent self is the self tha t establishes a rhy thm of living which does not merely encourage alteration or acceptance of the circumstances of life. The transcendent self is able to domes-

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ticate the passions aroused by the circumstances in such a manner tha t the experience may be characterized as concurrently immanent and transcendent. The experience belongs to the experiencer alone, but at the same time is of the other--as lovers share themselves and give and receive from outside of them- selves simultaneously in an acknowledgement of interdependence.

Hope, for any of us, is the opportunity to express our desired aim in such a manner that we, the hoper, seek to transcend our own self. We participate in the state o f being tha t is represented by hoping. Hope, like love, is a giving of self to something beyond oneself. It is the achievement, at least temporarily, of a state of being in which one acquires not merely a stoic acceptance of tha t which may appear almost to be inevitable, but one achieves the capacity to step delicately within the mysterious boundaries of that interface of relationship where he is simultaneously a part of his experience and beyond it. He has achieved that peace beyond magical t h i nk i ng or stoic acceptance where he is able to incorporate within himself the realization that the experience of the moment has acceptable meaning in the timeless, and tha t he, even at the moment of anguish, may glimpse the light.

Hope, being absorbed by our interior selves as being of the nature of love, can be likened to the Jewish conception of blessing or the Christ ian notion of grace. To live as a blessing or to live in a ~state of grace" is to reach tha t vantage point of life where it might be said tha t this person lives with a dynamic awareness of a divine presence in the life of man. This dynamic awareness of the sanctity of life then becomes re levant--makes a difference--in every condition tha t confronts a person throughout his existence. He will still be available and open to the possibility of achieving a sacred sense of comfort, whether he be con- fronted by joy or overwhelmed by sorrow.

References

1. Pruyser, P. W., "Phenomenology and Dynamics of Hoping," J. for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1963, 3, 92.

2. Marcel, G., Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysics of Hope, trans. Emma Crawford. Chicago, Henry Regnery Co., 1951, p. 146.

3. Ibid., p. 49. 4. Ibid., p. 67.