Notes 001 - hope
From: Though The Fig Tree Does Not Blossom, Chapter 5: A practice of hope.
Another practice of hope...is to choose to believe in the preposterous assertion of beauty amidst tragedy. The writer, Barbara Kingsolver demonstrates this practice in her book Small Wonder. The first essay in this book tells the story of a family in Afghanistan whose child wanders off and miraculously (or naturally as Kingsolver asserts) finds refuge with a bear that nourishes and protects him. It is such a powerful story because Kingsolver describes the anguish of the family and she places this small wonder in its context among other events in the fall of 2001, the Terrorist attacks in the United States and the subsequent bombing of Afghanistan. She remains accountable to the cycle of violence, hatred, and fear surrounding her and she chooses to believe this small wonder. She explains:
You could read this story and declare 'impossible' even though many witnesses have sworn it's true. Or you could read this story and think of how warm lives are drawn together in cold places, think of the unconquerable force of a mother's love, the fact of the DNA code that we share in its great majority with other mammals - you could think of all that and say, Of course the bear nursed the baby. He was crying from hunger and she had milk. Small wonder.
Embedded in tragic stories, one sometimes finds moments of beauty. These moments to not redeem the tragedy or justify it in any way. But they do, sometimes, enable one to survive it.
Another practice of hope...is to choose to believe in the preposterous assertion of beauty amidst tragedy. The writer, Barbara Kingsolver demonstrates this practice in her book Small Wonder. The first essay in this book tells the story of a family in Afghanistan whose child wanders off and miraculously (or naturally as Kingsolver asserts) finds refuge with a bear that nourishes and protects him. It is such a powerful story because Kingsolver describes the anguish of the family and she places this small wonder in its context among other events in the fall of 2001, the Terrorist attacks in the United States and the subsequent bombing of Afghanistan. She remains accountable to the cycle of violence, hatred, and fear surrounding her and she chooses to believe this small wonder. She explains:
You could read this story and declare 'impossible' even though many witnesses have sworn it's true. Or you could read this story and think of how warm lives are drawn together in cold places, think of the unconquerable force of a mother's love, the fact of the DNA code that we share in its great majority with other mammals - you could think of all that and say, Of course the bear nursed the baby. He was crying from hunger and she had milk. Small wonder.
Embedded in tragic stories, one sometimes finds moments of beauty. These moments to not redeem the tragedy or justify it in any way. But they do, sometimes, enable one to survive it.