Hoping against hope during Advent
For Christians, the season of Advent, the four Sundays leading up to Christ-mas, is the season of hope and anticipation. It is a glorious time, one seemingly at odds with the calendar itself because it coincides with the shortest days of the year (in the Northern Hemisphere). In the midst of darkness, we look for — we crave — hope and light.
It’s fair to say that many Americans are not feeling too hopeful right now, though it must be acknowledged that roughly the same percentage feels otherwise. For a second time, we’ve elected to the presidency a corrupt narcissist and scofflaw who will never be held responsible for his crimes, who plans to pardon his accomplices and who promises retribution against his opponents.
We have every reason to expect another four years of cronyism, self-dealing and prevarication. (I’m not a betting man, but I’d take the “over” on the 30, 573 false or misleading statements that Donald Trump tallied in his first term.)
To make matters worse, for at least the next two years (until the mid-term elections of 2026), we face an administration with no guardrails whatsoever. As his Cabinet choices already suggest, Trump surrounds himself with sycophants. Congress is prepared to do his bidding, and the Supreme Court, once a barrier to extremism, has embraced extremism and made a mockery of the rule of law.
We shall test over the next four years the durability of our democratic institutions. Will they be able to withstand the onslaught?
And where do we find hope in times like this?
We can look to history. The United States has weathered corrupt politicians before: New York’s Tammany Hall or the Teapot Dome scandal of Warren Harding’s administration, for example, or Water-gate in the 1970s.
We can look to various writers and pundits. Emily Dickinson wrote: “Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul, / And sings the tune without the words, / And never stops at all, / And sweetest in the gale is heard.”
Anne Lamott assures us that “Grace bats last,” and Garrison Keillor says that life is good, despite the fact that we have “elevated a cruel and corrupt man to power” and “now we shall see what good our Constitution is and what sort of senators and judges we have.”
I happen to believe that hope is a mandate. Some time ago, a colleague asked me to write an essay about hope, and it occurred to me that of the three so-called theological virtues — faith, hope and love — hope is the only virtue that is volitional.
That is to say that whereas faith (I believe) is a gift and love defies rational explanation, we can choose to be hopeful. Hope is an act of will. I can — and I do — choose to be hopeful. And I believe furthermore that, as a parent, I do not have the luxury of despair.
Make no mistake, I’m no Pollyanna. Like many others, I look on the next four years with a sense of foreboding. I have no illusions that the United States is about to enter a golden age. As someone said, MAGA most likely stands for “Make America Go Away.” The best that we in the resistance can hope for (that word again) is to “Make America Good Again.”
A heavy lift? Without a
BY THE WAY C2
By RANDALL BALMER
For the Valley News
doubt. But the season of Advent is about anticipation, finding glimmers of hope amid the darkness.
Christians are often told to “count your blessings.” Yes, we live in a troubled world of autocrats and pollution, of hunger and aggression. But it is also a world of stunning natural beauty, transcendent artistic production and good people doing good things.
It is a world where, more often than not, hope and patience are rewarded. That is the lesson of Advent.
One more example, albeit a trivial one. I’ve been a fan of the Detroit Lions since 1963, and anyone who follows football even loosely knows that my hopes have been dashed countless times over the last half century. As I write this, however, the Lions are favored to win the Super Bowl in February.
Hope, even when it involves hoping against hope, is a mandate.
Randall Balmer, an Episcopal priest, is the John Phillips Professor in Religion at Dartmouth College.
