Panu Pihkala: Hope and Tragedy in the Anthroposcene: How can we testify to hope for the oikos?

Dr. Panu Pihkala, ECEN Workshop, Budapest, August 2017



“Hope … is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons….

Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well,…but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good.”

- Vaclav Havel



In an era when there is much trouble in the world, how do we as Christians avoid the impression that our message of hope is…  too optimistic  too otherwordly (focus on heaven instead of this

world)?



 

Hope can mean many things Some people equate optimism = hope Philosophically (and theologically), hope is more related to meaning than to the probability of success (cf. The Havel quote above)

   

Is hope a verb, something that we do and practice?

Or is hope a noun, something that we have?

Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone: Active Hope Derrick Jensen: “when hope dies, action begins”

 

Offers tools to understand different versions of hope A focus on the act of hoping  Verb, not simply a noun



All typologies are heuristic



   

1. Patient hope 2. Critical Hope 3. Estimative hope 4. Resolute hope 5. Utopian hope

 





My proposal: we need integration of active and passive hope The focus on action (cf. Macy, and Derrick Jensen’s critique in Endgame and Orion magazine) is necessary… …But there are times when it is difficult to practice active hope. Then Christians have the security of trusting God -> But how to avoid misuse, passivism?

“I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.”

- T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”, Four Quartets



It is difficult to submit oneself to the dark period of searching for the right hope  Cf. ”Dark Night of the Planet”, Steven Chase,

Nature as Spiritual Practice, echoing St. John of the Cross  

Passive hope, suffering (passio) and waiting all are linked - but so is passion, which means action  Cf. Paul Ricoeur: hope as passion for the possible



Living in tragic times – but what do we mean by ”tragic”?  Cf. Classic forms of tragedy

  

Why do tragic plays (for example Shakespeare) continue to be popular?

Tragedy tells something elementary of human existence …and helps people to process evil together





There are genuine, tragic losses Some of the problems are caused, tragically, by the same characteristics of humans that have also positive sides  Innovativess, optimism etc.  Cf. ”Environmental tragedies”



How do we testify to both  1) the tragedy that numerous people live in?

▪ And all the environmental damage?

▪ ”It is happening already”; is it still possible to use the sustainability paradigm?  2) the joy in the midst of a troubled world?

▪ Jack Gilbert, ”A Brief for the Defense”

“Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.

But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.

Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not be fashioned so miraculously well.

The poor women at the fountain are laughing together between the suffering they have known and the awfulness in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody in the village is very sick. There is laughter every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta, and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.

If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation.

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.

We must admit there will be music despite everything. (‌)�



Religious communities such as Christian congregations have strong possibilities to build existential resilience (John Foster)  The ability to deal with fundamental issues such

as mortality, finitude, death, evil  But also with joy 

”Courage to Be” in the Anthropocene!

  

”Radical hope” (Jonathan Lear): hoping even when we cannot yet know what will save us Terry Eagleton: Hope without Optimism Resolute, critical hope? (Cf. Webb)

  



How can we help our churches with these issues?

A futures education resource by ECEN? ”Discussions on Hope” document with interview-style comments from around Europe?

Further development of rituals which help to process various emotions and the tragic?

 



How can we help our audiences to think and feel about the future(s)?

David Hicks: Educating for Hope in Troubled Times: Climate Change and the Transition to a Post-Carbon Future (2014) and other materials Rosemary Randall: In Time for Tomorrow: The Carbon Conversations Handbook  http://www.carbonconversations.co.uk/



Elin Kelsey  http://elinkelseyandcompany.com/

P. Pihkala:  ”Environmental Education After Sustainability: Hope in the Midst of Tragedy”, Global Discourse 7:1 (2017)  “The Pastoral Challenge of the Environmental Crisis: Environmental Anxiety and Lutheran ‘Eco-Reformation’”, Dialog Summer 2016 (10.1111/dial.12239)

panupp@yahoo.com