The Universe Of Hope

IF YOU WANT real Hope and Change, don’t expect it from a politician. You are committing a category error. Everyone agrees that soldiers and politicians are the fighters, businessmen and workers are the workers, and teachers, clerics, and writers are the prayers. It’s the job of the teachers and clerics in the moral/cultural sector to be in charge of the hoping.

So if you want to ponder the question of hope, the Christmas (or Hannukah, or Divali) festival is a good one to anchor your thoughts.

All these mid-winter festivals are about light or about new-borns. Light is hope, for it lets you see, and birth is hope because every new-born is a reckless expression of hope.

In fact, life is hope. Every living thing, from an irritable amoeba to a little plant struggling in the desert; from a bird flying around on a snowy day looking for food to a young human adolescent yearning to be grown up and free, every living thing is an impersonation of hope. Where there is life, there is hope, and where there is hope there is life.

But hope is not a dream. You cannot just sit back in a reverie and hope. That isn’t life. That’s just deliquescing. Real hope is a dream put into action. It is the young love of a human couple translated into marriage and children. It is the dream of creativity translated into step-by-step actions towards a goal.

And, of course, real hope often involves sacrifice. Maybe it is the sacrifice of the parent for the welfare of the child. Maybe it is the sacrifice of the soldier who dies that others may live. Maybe it is the impossible sacrifice of Christianity: God sacrifices his Son so humans don’t have to sacrifice theirs in expiation of their sins.

What is Hope? All you can do is have faith in Hope. Probably it will all come clear when Pope Benedict XVI issues his third encyclical, which should be due a year from now. Remember? The first was issued on December 25, 2005 and called God is Love. The second was issued on November 30, 2007 and called Saved by Hope. The third one? Something about Faith, I shouldn’t wonder, although, as the Holy Father writes, Hope and Faith are pretty much one and the same thing. But then you could say that Hope and Love are pretty much one and the same.

Faith, Hope, Love. There’s something about all three. Just thinking about them fills you with Faith, Hope and Love. Try it for yourself.

Merry Christmas from all of us at Road to the Middle Class.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems� No more rules, no more models� Genius conjures up rather than learns� ” —Victor Hugo
C�sar Gra�a, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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