Hope Comes From the Place
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More in Open Horizons on the Bengsons:
Response
I am sure that many who hear this song will think in individual terms. It's about dealing with personal tragedy, or failure, or shame, or loss. But these words caught me: "When your world is burning down, well getting hot is a sane reaction, but one in need of action, because your spirit needs protection."
Here's my point. We can listen to the song with the social and ecological despair we rightly feel in light of the disasters we are now inflicting ourselves through global climate change, political dysfunction, violence and hatred. Where does hope come from? It comes from facing the place where the hurt happens, the place of despair.
There might seem to be a contradiction in the Bengson’s answer. On the one hand the song encourages us to recognize that the place where we suffer is also a source of hope, because it includes within it a love for the light, and thus a hope for change. We are left to think that, if we are to have hope, we must look within.
And yet the song also invites us to look beyond ourselves. We are encouraged to get down on our knees and acknowledge that we are not alright, thus appealing to something more than us, perhaps to God. And it simultaneously encourages us to lean on other people, and have them lean on us, so that we can find hope, and act, together.
So which is it? Look within or look without? Self-reliance or other-reliance? I am reminded of the two schools of Buddhism: Zen and Pure Land. Zen encourages self-reliance and Pure Land encourages reliance on a cosmic Bodhisattva. The Bengsons seem to be both Zen and Pure Land in spirit.
Perhaps process theology helps us appreciate their approach. Process theology sees the eternal companion of the universe, God, as an inwardly lure toward light, toward creative transformation, toward hope, within us. And it sees this lure, this light, as also within other people and within the natural world, and thus beyond us, too. It is a Beyond that is Within, and a Within that is Beyond.
Process theology adds that that this lure is influential in our live insofar as we act in cooperation with it, sharing in its own hopes for us. We can’t just feel the lure, we need also respond to it, and in this response lies our hope. "Hope is not a feeling, it's an action."
- Jay McDaniel, August 7, 2021
Here's my point. We can listen to the song with the social and ecological despair we rightly feel in light of the disasters we are now inflicting ourselves through global climate change, political dysfunction, violence and hatred. Where does hope come from? It comes from facing the place where the hurt happens, the place of despair.
There might seem to be a contradiction in the Bengson’s answer. On the one hand the song encourages us to recognize that the place where we suffer is also a source of hope, because it includes within it a love for the light, and thus a hope for change. We are left to think that, if we are to have hope, we must look within.
And yet the song also invites us to look beyond ourselves. We are encouraged to get down on our knees and acknowledge that we are not alright, thus appealing to something more than us, perhaps to God. And it simultaneously encourages us to lean on other people, and have them lean on us, so that we can find hope, and act, together.
So which is it? Look within or look without? Self-reliance or other-reliance? I am reminded of the two schools of Buddhism: Zen and Pure Land. Zen encourages self-reliance and Pure Land encourages reliance on a cosmic Bodhisattva. The Bengsons seem to be both Zen and Pure Land in spirit.
Perhaps process theology helps us appreciate their approach. Process theology sees the eternal companion of the universe, God, as an inwardly lure toward light, toward creative transformation, toward hope, within us. And it sees this lure, this light, as also within other people and within the natural world, and thus beyond us, too. It is a Beyond that is Within, and a Within that is Beyond.
Process theology adds that that this lure is influential in our live insofar as we act in cooperation with it, sharing in its own hopes for us. We can’t just feel the lure, we need also respond to it, and in this response lies our hope. "Hope is not a feeling, it's an action."
- Jay McDaniel, August 7, 2021