Hope: a reverb

The following is a response to passages of scripture (a “Reverb”) that I read to my spiritual community, Church of the Apostles (COTA) at the Fremont Abbey in Seattle, WA on 5/25/25. COTA is a joint Lutheran/Episcopalian ministry by and for the community, is an open & affirming congregation for LGBTQ+ people, and a collaborative and creative congregation. (See references below.)

—

Hope is an incredible thing. 

We hope for things we can barely imagine, and we hope for more of what we have. We hope that what we’ve had and lost will return again, in some form. 

Hope is about the future, but it ties us to the present and the past.

I am a visual artist and a poetic writer, so my thoughts don’t always make linear sense. But I have a LOT of thoughts about hope. 

In 2021, Chris and I had just gotten married, and we hoped to have a child one day. I had just started graduate school, which had been a longing of mine for so long that I barely even dared to hope for it – it was more of an ache. 

The first series of paintings in my MFA program was called “Things I want to tell my children about climate change.” I did a lot of research into climate psychology, which is a newer emerging field and one that helps people face climate anxiety. One of my favorite books on this topic isn’t written by a psychologist, but a climate scientist named Katherine Hayhoe. It’s called “Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World.” She comes to the conclusion that HOPE is the single most important factor, because without centering hope, most people cannot process the enormity of the issue without either feeling helpless and shutting down, or getting defensive and turning towards denial. 

I started making these really big, colorful, abstract paintings on paper while I was thinking about all this, and the first one was called “Hope is a sustainable resource” (subtitle: Build a Garden). Nature itself is the greatest example to me of sustainability, adaptability, and eternal return; what withers and dies in one season always returns again the next, in some form, same or different, always beautiful. 

Hope is cyclical.

And this is the power and the heartache of hope: it CAN wither and die, and those moments of hopelessness feel like a black hole that can never be escaped from. Even if it doesn’t last long, being present in that can feel like the end of the story. I do not, for instance, have endless optimism about climate change. I feel so much grief that the world our children are born into has already so many species of plant and animal life that existed during my childhood, and that of my mother, and my grandmother… We do need our times of mourning and grieving our losses. But change is not a closed door, it is a transition into a new form of life. What can we tell our children about climate change? We tell them: Hope is a sustainable resource. We tell them: Build a garden, tend it, watch it grow. We tell them: We are all connected. We create the world we want to live in. Protect and defend it. Use what we have to make what we need. 

There is one painting in this series that is a little different; it’s on canvas instead of paper, and it’s literally as big as I could make it in my house - it’s six feet tall. I had to put my whole body into it, and it helped me process some of this grief and hope in a more somatic way. It’s the one I asked if I could show during this reverb, and it’s called “Between Grief and Serenity lies Hope.” It’s about looking toward the future, but being grounded in the present (the earth) and the past (the history of our ancestors). Today, it’s tacked up like a mural in my daughter’s room. 

***

I’m going to circle back around, because this is cyclical.

If you know me, you know I have a deep fear of public speaking, so of course when Katherine asked if I’d like to do the reverb this week, I heard that little voice of god whisper mischievously in my ear. 

Don’t you sometimes hate it when you’re called to do something? 

I hear this calling in the texts today: Lydia is called to be baptized. She is called to open her heart and listen deeply, to take in the spirit of god. In the gospel, Jesus tells us that god will send the holy spirit, which will teach us everything. 

What is the holy spirit but that little voice that whispers inside us? The one we don’t always want to hear? It may not be convenient, or easy, and we may wonder- why the heck would god want me to go through this? 

When I was 26 years old, I was called to be baptized. I had lived my whole life basically deeply anti-religious, intellectual, atheist – by way of cultural upbringing. But there had been hints, looking back, of my longing for some larger spiritual connection in life. When a friend invited me to their church and I started hearing the words of Jesus, something started calling to me. In the entire new testament, these are some of my favorite words: “Peace I leave with you; My Peace I give to you,” and “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

I thought, just as a thought exercise, if this was a literal directive from god - DO NOT BE AFRAID - then, whoa. But you can’t have trust without surrender, and you can’t experience safety and belonging without trust. 

You can’t feel peace until you choose to set down your fear. And this felt really hard to accept. Wasn’t it fear that kept me safe all those years? Isn’t it human to have a troubled heart? If my heart is no longer troubled, what will I become?

But I decided to act “as if.” I chose to imagine a god who was big enough to hold me AND my fear; to understand how hard it was to choose peace in my heart – not because I didn’t want it, but because I was scared of letting my guard down – and still, they continue to offer it to me freely, anyway. 

So I followed my intuition, the voice inside, the holy spirit that moved me – and I chose to trust god, so that I could learn to trust myself. I experienced what I have heard described as an ego death in the water grave, and a rebirth into new life: a life filled with hope. In that water, I felt the deepest sense of peace, and I knew this decision didn’t have to make sense to anyone else. It was just for me. 

Of course, I then had to come out to my extremely liberal, atheist parents… for the third time… I had previously told them I was a lesbian (they were thrilled); then that I was bisexual (less thrilled). Now I had to sit them down once more and admit that now, improbably, I also liked…Jesus. I was VERY afraid. And you know what? They were surprisingly kind about it. They continued to accept and love me. This taught me something else about hope, which is that it’s like a prayer. Sometimes, more often than we expect, when we are brave, our prayers are answered. 

Every coming out in my life has been like this. Every brave action is preceded by fear, and in the end is far less of a problem than I’ve feared. We are never afraid of what we’ve ALREADY done.

Fear is a facade, and a paradox: it’s as solid a barrier as any brick wall – until we take the step, and walk right though it, and it turns to fog right before our eyes. This is the interplay between Spirit and Human: God makes anything possible, and we take the next right step. That is the miracle.

Hope precedes and follows fear - cycles of hope are all around us.

There have been many, many hard times in my life where I felt that I could not possibly move forward. There have been so many barriers, it seemed, to living my truth, following my calling, and being myself. I have had to keep coming out in different ways, over and over again. Every time, I feel frustrated, defeated, annoyed, hopeful, brave, proud, powerful. 

In choosing to trust my calling, I can see clearly where I need to go next in life, even when it’s hard. My surrender gives me power. My spirit can’t be killed. My biggest fear is no longer the earthly consequences of being myself; it is the fear of never getting to live my true calling - an internal death. The ego I used to cling to died in that baptism, and a new humility and joy was born in me.

A new hope. 

***

Circling forward again,

because hope is cyclical.

The past year has been an awakening of my imagination

of what is possible

for myself, my family, my community. 

Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; My Peace I give to you.” This is the gift of soothing, of a balm that carries with it the unbelievable healing of the soul. Have you ever experienced such goodness that it felt hard to take in? A big lesson I am learning in this season of my life is how hard it is for me to Receive. 

So often, we think we want happiness, but if we really get what we want, we can barely stand it. Who wouldn’t want the Peace of God to be with them, any time they want it? Doesn’t that sound incredible? But somehow it’s so hard to believe that we can really have that. Or is it just so hard to let go, and let it in? 

My word for myself this year is BRAVE.

(And as glennon Doyle says, “if you can’t beat the fear, just do it scared.”)

I am allowing and inviting in:
Curiosity, play, creativity, joy;
reconnecting with my body; 
and the ability to Receive;

I am inviting in grief, excitement, love, healing, and hope.
I am allowing myself to be seen.

I want to surrender
crack open
be healed.

We change the world when we change ourselves.

Letting god in through the cracks,
allowing the mystery.

God is with us, carries us; 
She is stronger than anything, even the fears that threaten to consume me. 

Last week, for instance, I did a big thing. I was really scared, and it was very vulnerable, and I did it anyway.

Afterwards, I felt relieved, and grateful –  but I was also (and this is the only phrase I could think to describe it) emotional rubble.

Which is not actually a terrible place to be, because I know that what comes next is a beautiful rebuilding, using all of the blueprints and knowledge of the past, each time bigger and more breathtaking than before. 

Hope is cyclical.

The fact that we have ever felt peace means that it will come again. (And if we have never felt the deepest peace of god yet, we can borrow that hope from someone who has.) We can notice the power of the times in life we have felt hopeless, and the new life that has bloomed in the wreckage – even the smallest flower peeking out of the rubble is a reminder that hope is always a renewable resource. God finds a way forward, and so will we. 

“I think hope is cyclical,” I told my Sufi healer/teacher friend, and she said, “yeah!” —she said the Sufis know this. They call it Expansion and Contraction, and they are…the same. 

The good and bad; the easy and hard; the rewarding and the challenging...everything is just expansion, then contraction, then expansion again. Pain and pleasure, suffering and joy, love and hate, faith and fear, worry and peace.

Expand. Contract.
Let it in. The good and the bad - it’s all the same. It is all from God.

When we’re where we want to be, rejoice in it; bask in god's peace.

When we are feeling overwhelmed by the pain of the world, remember god's grace, and the solace that always comes alongside the suffering, the healing that comes with grief.

Remember that longing is love. The absence of hope proves the existence of hope. If you’re not feeling it now, you will again. The serenity of the Spirit is available to you always — sometimes it just takes a risk, and a rebuilding, and a willingness to trust what comes next.  ■

May 25, 2025

Reference Texts:

John 14:23-29
Jesus answered [Judas (not Iscariot),] “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.

 “I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.  And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.”

Acts 16:9-15 — Lydia and her household are baptized

16:9During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, "Come over to Macedonia and help us."

16:10When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.

16:11We therefore set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis,

16:12and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days.

16:13On the Sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer, and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there.

16:14A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul.

16:15When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, "If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home." And she prevailed upon us.