Mature Hope

An email I sent to a friend on August 23:

I'm still reading "The City of Joy" - it's the book about Kolkata - and I came upon this quote that described my feelings in full. What I was trying to get out to you during one of our conversations.

The premise of this section is about a priest living in a slum next door to a 10-year-old boy dying of osteotuberculosis and screaming in pain every night.

"He [the priest] was torn between his religious faith and his very human feelings of revolt. Had he any right to be happy, to sing praise to God while the intolerable torment was going right next to him?"

I'm caught between these two worlds - one that believes in a God that IS LOVE and one where suffering exists. Hope and hopelessness. I want to find the hope I once possessed, and yet I know I cannot go back because that hope was false hope. I know there is still hope to have but it's a different kind - a more mature hope. I don't know what it looks like yet, but I desperately need to find it. I see glimpses of that new hope. But I can't hold on to it long enough to realize what is different.

Does that make sense?

The priest prays this prayer, "You who died on the Cross to save mankind, help me to understand the mystery of suffering. Help me to transcend it. Help me, above all, to fight against its causes, against the lack of love, against hatred and against all the injustices that give rise to it."

This is now my own prayer.


Lindsay