What Hope Asks of Us

I am writing this sitting in the Roosevelt House at the Schoodic Institute in Winter Harbor, Maine. We are here for our annual gathering of Peace Corps Volunteers who trained together and then worked in communities large and small throughout Chile more than sixty years ago.

Just some of us at Schoodic

For more than forty years we have gathered to share stories of our experiences and rekindle friendships.

Telling stories of traveling by horse to an assigned community, of making a monthly pilgrimage to a grocery store, and of being welcomed into homes for meals.

Stories of planting trees, developing aquaculture projects, and exploring possiSble commercial fish populations in the waters of Patagonia. And stories of others in Santiago, the capital of Chile, where buses overflowed with passengers clinging to the sides, working alongside college-educated peers—and sometimes being regarded with mistrust.

We still tell those stories, but something has changed.

We walk more slowly now. Some need help getting around, and others quietly offer it.

Together, we are learning what it means to become elders.

Sitting here, I find myself thinking about hope. As I age, I appreciate it more. When I was younger, doing and becoming carried more weight.

Frenchman Bay, Bar Harbor, Acadia, Maine

Perhaps hope was part of what drew us to the Peace Corps in the first place. We were young, and we believed our presence and work might make a difference. We certainly didn't know what would come of it.

“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.”— Jane Goodall

Hope does not require knowing what will happen. Rather, it asks something of us anyway. It asks us to keep working, to move forward, even when we cannot see where events are leading.

Rugosa Rose, Schoodic Institute

Sixty years ago, hope called me—and all of us—to go somewhere.

And now, perhaps, hope asks us to remain present—to one another, to what life asks of us, and to whatever still remains ours to do.

Sources:

Jane Goodall with Douglas Abrams, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times.

George A. Aschenbrenner, S.J., Stretched for Greater Glory: What to Expect from the Spiritual Exercises.

Photos: Rick Raymond