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You know the world has shifted when the idea of hope has become a widely discussed and contested notion.  Prompted by the ever-morphing COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing bite of climate change, the shift is characterized by the altered order of things and grief.  For example, a New Yorker cartoon of four children sitting behind a birthday cake as one of them prepares to blow out the candles bears the caption, “Don’t overthink it—any wish that’s not about reversing climate change is pretty pointless anyhow. (1)  Opposite wishing is resignation, such as the inimitable Lady Violet of Downton Abbey remarking, “Hope is a tease designed to prevent us accepting reality.”

But there are more constructive perspectives.  Thomas Merton advocated recognizing the present moment’s challenges and possibilities and embracing them “with courage, faith, and hope.” (ii)  Hilton Als says, “a sense of purpose… is ultimately what hope is.”(iii)   Individuals from Gautama Buddha to George Bernard Shaw have pronounced on the centrality of purpose.  The latter identifies it as “the true joy in life,” the former says, “Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it.”

Joan Halifax, a Buddhist teacher and Zen priest with considerable experience dealing with seemingly hopeless situations, expands on the connection between hope and purpose by distinguishing between “ordinary hope” and “wise hope.” Based in desire, ordinary hope “has an expectation that always hovers in the background, the shadow of fear that one’s wishes will not be fulfilled.”  Wise hope is “living by vow”; “our vows support us in staying aligned with our deepest values.”  Wise hope can be a form of resistance.  Wise hope acknowledges “we can’t know how things will turn out, but we can trust that there will be movement, there will be change.” (iv)

Just before the pandemic hit the United States, the South Dakota poet, Phyllis Cole-Dai, dreamt that “a relative who was dying invited the family in for a celebration of her life…. And she asked us to read a poem to her together.” (v)  In the dream, the poem took the form of a remarkable, turquoise-coloured volume that Cole-Dai described as “a very, very special book.”  The “multitudes of people” who gathered around their dying relative’s bed to read the poem were only able to do this because they were in a “dream world.”  When they read the poem, “an amazing wave of love and consolation swept through us. And it was that feeling, I think, that woke me up.  [It] was almost like a voice telling me that I needed to write the words of this poem down.”

Cole-Dai’s meditative poem, “,” has been likened to a balm, a gift, and a life raft that can carry people “to the other side of [their] journey of grief.” (vi)  To me, it applies as much to the climate crisis as it does to the pandemic.  The poem begins: “For the sake of one we love / and are losing, / we will not be afraid. / But when we are afraid / we will embrace what we fear / as if it were a lost child / crying in our arms. / We will not walk away / from what needs to be seen / and cared for. / We will not walk away.” (vii)

In Cole-Dai’s five-minute reading of her inspired poem (available online; search Soundcloud + the poem’s title), the emphasis she gives the repeated line, “We will… not… walk… away,” is an expression of wise hope and living by vow.

Patrick Wolfe has an abiding interest in grace and the mystic.  Author of the forthcoming book A Snake on the Heart – History, Mystery, and Truth: The Entangled Journeys of a Biographer and His Nazi Subject, his web site can be found at:

You can read more articles on our interfaith blog, Spiritually Speaking, HERE: /blogs/spiritually-speaking

* This article was published in the print edition of the Times 91原创 on Saturday, February 26^th 2022