Hope in the Rubble: Advent and the Poetry of Palestine
HOW CAN I KNOW?
Hope is a dangerous thing. Zechariah and Elizabeth understood just how dangerous hope is. They married young, as was the custom, and dreamed of having several children, as was the custom, because children were seen as the highest calling and greatest blessing of marriage. Month after month they anxiously awaited signs of pregnancy. They hoped and they prayed—fervently—but each month ended in disappointment.
This went on for years until, at some point—and they weren’t even sure exactly when—they lost hope; the door closed on their dream of children. And then, eventually, age and biology locked the door and put the chain on it.
Zechariah served as a priest in the Temple. One day, lots were cast and old man Zechariah received the once-in-a-lifetime honor of entering the sanctuary of the Temple to burn incense to the Lord. While he was there alone in the sanctuary, a blinding light exploded in his presence. An angel appeared to Zechariah and announced that his wife Elizabeth would bear a son who would become a mighty prophet of God.
Zechariah responded to the angel, “How can I know that this will happen? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” The angel scolds Zechariah for his skepticism and brazen appeal for proof and responds by making him mute—unable to speak—until all these things have come to pass.
On the one hand, it’s hard to believe Zechariah would question such a fantastic celestial messenger. But, on the other hand, I get it. Zechariah knew firsthand that hope is a dangerous thing. He knew that hope bears the capacity to cause great suffering and heartache. For so many years he and Elizabeth desperately clung to their hope for a child. Month after month, year after year, they prayed for and believed such a miracle was possible, even when others said it wasn’t.
And month after month, year after year, their hopes were dashed. Their hearts ached. Finally, they accepted that a child wasn’t in the cards for them. And now this angel would tempt Zechariah to reopen that wound, and to risk being devastated all over again. So Zechariah asks for some assurance: Before I let myself hope again; before I make myself vulnerable, how can I know that what you say is even remotely possible?
I SUFFER FROM A PHOBIA CALLED HOPE
The Palestinian poet Maya Abu Al-Hayyat explores this same tension—the promise and the danger of hope—in her poem, “I Suffer from a Phobia Called Hope”:
Each time I hear that word
I recall the disappointments
that were committed in its name:
the children who don’t return,
the ailments that are never cured,
the memory that’s never senile,
all of them hope crushed
beneath its wings as I smash
this mosquito on my daughter’s head.*
The grieving have only the unknown.
It’s their only staple and inheritance.
Pain has no logic. All things redeem
the grieving except your rational questions.*
I wish that no one goes
and no one comes.
All going is a stroke of myth
and each return
a punctured lung.
This poem is raw and unsettling. Its words give voice to the deep heartache of the people of Palestine today and to the ancient heartache of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Lines like “I recall the disappointments / committed in its name [hope’s name]” are particularly poignant reflections on the danger of hope.
We so often think hope is always something beautiful and uplifting. Emily Dickinson’s poem “‘Hope’ is the Thing with Feathers” (to which Al-Hayyat gives a nod), imagines hope as a bird within our soul. However, unlike Dickinson’s feathered hope, Al-Hayyat’s crushes everything beneath its wings.
It would seem that this poem is warning against hope, but the borders between hope and despair here are a bit more porous than they may first appear. What’s more, rarely does a poem (a good poem, anyway) mean just “one thing.” Rather, it invites us in to explore, to ask it questions. It invites us to wrestle with ideas and meaning. Al-Hayyat’s poem is no exception. Notice that the speaker’s phobia is activated again and again because, despite the speaker’s best efforts, hope continues to break through. She can’t not hope.
Whatever this poem’s ultimate view on hope is, one thing is clear: hope is dangerous because it has the capacity to causes greater suffering by risking failure. Zechariah understood that danger and so he was unwilling to allow himself to go there again too quickly. But despite the risk, despite the danger, despite the pain and suffering brought about failure, resignation and despair are untenable alternatives.
ADVENT & THE UNREST OF HOPE
The promise of hope is that it refuses to accept the world as it is; to accept the status quo. It insistently clings to the belief that another world is possible, despite all the evidence to the contrary. We long for this world.
The season of Advent is a season of waiting and longing; of longing for a world that does not yet exist. A world of peace, of love, of justice. A world where there is enough food for everyone; a world where there is dignified housing for everyone; a world where people aren’t warehoused in prisons and where bombs aren’t dropped on hospitals and schoolchildren.
In our weariness and longing for this world we cry out, Come, Lord Jesus, Come quickly. We cry out, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” We cry out, “Come thou long expected Jesus.” We long for the day when God fully reigns on earth as in heaven.
You may say that this hope for another world is irrational; you may say it’s naive, it’s pie-in-the-sky. And let me be very honest: I don’t really know what, exactly, it will look like or how it will come about—it is a great mystery—but I do believe there will be a day when our swords are turned into plowshares, and our spears into pruning hooks, and we will study war no more. There will be a day when the valleys are filled and the mountains are made low; when the first will be last and the last will be first, and God’s kin-dom will come on earth as in heaven. I cling this hope.
You may say that this hope is too “in the sweet by and by”; too “other worldly.” And I would say to you this vision for another world is precisely what sparks in me and my community a resistance to the status quo and compels us to action in our present world.
The theologian Jurgen Moltmann said it this way:
“[H]ope causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in [humans]. Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.”
It is this “promised future,”—God’s kin-dom—which disturbs us and sparks within us a zeal for change. It is our promised future which births a dangerous hope; a stubborn insistence that another world is not only possible, but is indeed coming. And we are called to live into that promised future right here, right now.
Our sisters and brothers in Palestine show us that hope makes our hearts vulnerable; it opens us up to heartache and suffering. But hope is a risk that we can’t not take. They show us that hope is an act of resistance against the powers of this present world.
May we stand in solidarity with hurting and hoping people everywhere as we testify with our mouths and our feet that another world is coming and it’s already here. This Advent, may we recommit ourselves to the dangerous, resistance-work of hope.