First week Advent

 The theme for this week is "hope."

And yes: in a Christian context, it means the hope of Jesus coming to make things right, to reconcile humanity to God. And I get that, yes.

But the more - I guess you would say "temporal" sort of hope? The hope where you expect things in the here and now to get better? I struggle with that now. (Some years back I talked about the various themes - hope, peace, joy, love - and noted I sometimes struggle with joy, because yes, it does tend to be in my nature to be serious or even solemn.)

But yes, now, hope (in the specific sense I noted) is hard for me. I've lost a lot of people in the last few years, and "gained" very few (in the sense of making new friends, or even meeting new people. Everything I read about COVID suggests we'll never be free of it, and some people suspect a lot of us will just wind up with various disabilities/early death caused by its vascular effects. I'm back to masking most of the time (I think I'm still OK in the classroom, though, I'm distant from people). I'm avoiding restaurants and movie theaters and plays. And I may always have to? Yes, there are vaccines and I'm as vaccinated as a person can be - but "sterilizing immunity" was a wild dream we didn't get, the best we got was "well, it won't kill you now" and.....I would rather not be sick, thank you, at all. And I see authoritarianism rising in the world, and the rise of what I see as a strain of great unkindness in my own culture.....and it's just hard. Like I said at one point in 2020 or 2021 (the days all run together now): is there going to be anything WORTH coming back out to?

But in my own house, by myself, I am lonesome. And there's only so much time I can spend knitting or reading (Yes, I know, some would argue that, but I am much more restless now - or what might have been something like latent ADHD has flared up - and I have a hard time sitting for long)

But it is hard. It's hard to look into the future and expect good things: I am getting older, my health will eventually start to go downhill, I will lose more of the people I care about and I don't know how to fix that or even really deal with it. 

I guess I wish I felt there was more hope here on the earth for me - that I had some kind of exciting dream I could achieve (What? I don't even know. "Getting another article published" is so small and so thin, "doing a good job teaching plant systematics" is just EXPECTED of me. I don't have a book in me and I can't paint and I can't design sweaters and I don't even play the piano all that well....so a lot of the dreams I might have would be cut off from reality or achievability.) I would like some evidence that things were getting better but it seems we've stalled in some areas (public health) an are getting actively worse in others (civility) and....I don't know.

Yes, "Be the change you want to see in the world" but I have tried that for like 35 years and it's got me nowhere, things are no better than they were before, and I'm exhausted, and I have really no power to change or improve anything. 

I suppose people of deeper faith than I have would say that means it's time to surrender and let God. Maybe that's what I have to do: give up that I can do anything worthwhile or see any improvement under my own powers and just....hope?

But hope is hard, especially now, especially after a draining three years or so.