Hope Where You Sit

Outside the confines of my suburban home and tree-filled neighborhood there lies a crazy world. A world where governments fall with abandon and reporters risk their lives to cover the news. A world where two billion people live in deepest poverty, earning less than one dollar per day. A world in which the climate changes yearly, racking up ever-higher average temperatures and record rain or snow falls, while other areas suffer 100-year droughts. When we dare to peek our heads out of our suburban turtle-shells, where do we find hope?

A quote from Philip Berrigan pointed me in a new direction. I heard it yesterday in Engaging Spirituality: "For Christians, hope is where your ass is!" For Berrigan, hope could be found only in engaging the issues of our time and dealing with them fisthand; fighting poverty in the inner cities, fighting the build-up of weapons at a nuclear weapons facility, tending to the prisoners in prison. He made me think about where my derriere resides most of the time - on an office chair in my kitchen or in a Toyota minivan. Not sure which place is less likely to spring forth with a fount of hope.

Actually, my body usually resides in a location where it can function for my family, and they are a source of hope for me. I serve them (often grudgingly, it's true) and give up my desires and goals for their betterment. This kind of service is rewarding, but since I ultimately want them to love service and to be a better servant than I am, we should probably ALL be out where the need is greatest. Three cute little tushes and two bigger ones could all be in a soup kitchen, senior center or day laborer's site together.

It's a struggle to know where to place my ass for the sake of hope; it's hard enough to fit it into my favorite pair of jeans. But hope is a valuable commodity and if we want to face the realities of this world and live a relevant life we have to engage and we have to have hope. Right now my rear end is glued to the kitchen chair and there's not a whole lot of higher energy around here, so it might just be time to move.