The Idea of Hope

Aug 27

2 min read

I looked out the window and saw a baby fawn nestled partially under our front deck. She stayed there quietly ... until my wife returned with our dog.

She sensed the dog.

And then she was gone.

We had worried about her being so close to the house.

While the fawn was there, we searched online to learn whether there was something we should do.

I learned that a mother deer will sometimes leave her fawn in a safe place, the fawn somehow knowing to remain there until she returns.

The fawn may appear to be sleeping while remaining alert to what is happening around her.

But now she was gone. We worried.

We hoped she would find her mother–and that her mother would find her.

Thinking about hope leads me to Jane Goodall. I had read her book, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times. She also wrote Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey.

Hope was central to Goodall's way of seeing the world. She wrote: “Hope is what enables us to keep going in the face of adversity ...... it is what we desire to happen, but we must be prepared to work hard to make it so.”

For Goodall, hope is not simply optimism or wishing for a desired outcome. Hope asks something of us. There is a reciprocal relationship between hope and action: hope leads us to act, and our actions strengthen our hope.

But I wonder if there is another dimension of hope.

We wanted the fawn to find her mother. Yet there was little we could do to make that happen. In fact, any well-intentioned intervention might have made matters worse.

Sometimes hope calls us to act.

Sometimes, hope calls us to wait.

There is something Ignatian* in that distinction. Discernment is not simply deciding what to do. It is also paying attention—recognizing when we are being called to act and when we are being asked to let go of our desire to control the outcome.

Richard Rohr and writers from the Center for Action and Contemplation** speak of a deeper, participatory hope—a hope grounded not in evidence that things will turn out as we wish, but in our willingness to participate faithfully in life as it unfolds.

That changes the question. Instead of asking only, Will what I hope for happen, perhaps I can ask, what is hope asking of me?

Sometimes the answer may be action. Sometimes perseverance. Sometimes surrender.

And sometimes it may simply be staying present to what is before me, trusting what I cannot yet see.

The little fawn disappeared into the woods.

I didn't know whether she found her mother.

The next day, though, we saw the two of them together. Our hearts sang!