I used to think this about myself:
I am an eternal optimist.
I liked the idea. I'd practically chirp it at people. Eternal optimist.
An eternal optimist, because God is big, and God is my God, and because promises of justice, and rapture, and right-setting, because God said so.
An eternal optimist, because I used to believe matters of healing, hope, "calling" were dependent on how hard I was willing to work for them; that God values a hard worker, a determined person, someone willing to do the quote-unquote heavy lifting. And I am, if nothing else, a hard worker, so, clearly, I was set to Do Great Things; to Be Something Great. Clearly.
An eternal optimist, because I am a control freak prone to tunnel vision, and I believe in the power of people setting their minds to things and getting things done, which sometimes looks like "control-freak-tunnel-vision" and, other times, looks like "self-flagellation-tunnel-vision."
I wasn't an optimist. I was severely busted and in deep denial of what I'd suffered, but by gawd, I was smiling. Because I was Young, and the world was vast, and I had plenty of time, and I thought I was fine. I had so much room in which to spread out, in which to believe that the world would only get better as I got older. It's the theme song of The Rough Start: things will get better. It's the hope of those who haven't suffered a Rough Start, too; it's the universal hope, the spark in the bloodstream. The way forward. Things will get better. And we dream of it, an savor for it; drowsily in our beds, driving to our jobs, fervently taking notes in class, singing songs to God against a pretty ceiling. It will get better; the future is taking shape; we're on our way there!
For me: this hope took shape in the belief that my life would act as a barometer for my worth, and the work of my life would indicate whether I deserved the hope toward which I reached. It was my work to do, all of it. Out of the meaningless void, I was to stand back from the big picture and examine it with a critical eye; I was to envision exactly where to place each brick along each row of myself. The hope in this was the same shape as the work, and God will choose to help you if you really need it but God won't force you because God is a gentleman (please don't use rape analogies to talk about God. God.). In this arrangement, God stands back and observes, except for when he shakes his head disapprovingly while you clean up your messes. And eventually, in theory, you end up solid. Impenetrable. Invulnerable. You and God, standing in proximity; each uninvested in the work of the other. You nod, cordially.
But what about when you realize it was all bullshit?
But what about when you realize that it - whatever It is - will never be?
What happens when you realize the shape of your "faith" was kind of like a big middle finger to yourself? and you learned that that was the shape of God?
What happens when you get older, and things don't get better? when shit happens, or doesn't happen, and you realize that true, deep reconciliation of anything is rare, and resolution of anything is a freaking unicorn?
What happens when you acquire experiences, wounds, truths that are complete in their own big picture, but which are, in their fullness, unwelcome wherever you go? truths that clamor to be known, that live and breathe to be known in the spirit, by the spirit in us, but where can you bring them?
What happens God is bigger than anything! slams face-first into injustice that is imbued with pure evil? when the justice for which you've bled will escape your own personal experience? when you come to understand just how finite and breakable you are, and that God made you that way? when you realize that your tradition lied to you and that, actually, some wounds will never heal? when you realize that Youth allowed you enough space to hope that you'd see, on earth, maybe a single spark of the redemption in which you've believed, but now, you realize you won't? when you're faced with the demoralizing reality that some things will never be set right?
Hope changes shape. It rolls around in my head: hope changes shape. So I guess hope changes shape, or something.
When we're young, we look toward the hope of our older years as paved with personal meaning, brick by brick; when we're older, we realize what our coming years might mean, in uncivilized wilderness. I'm not saying that my own personal ship has sailed, so don't read it that way. I'm not an older person, but I'm older than I've ever been. And I don't know if things ever really Get Better. I grieve the death of hopes in the face of Hope taking shape. Hope, which propels us to look forward, still does so.. but toward what?
Whatever. I have pneumonia and a bad attitude right now and I have no witty ending so basically don't listen to me ever. (crawls under bed.) (wishes there were pizza-shaped hope under here.)
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