Hope springs eternal… (with apologies to Alexander Pope)
The Concise Catholic Dictionary defines hope as: The theological virtue which is a supernatural gift bestowed by God through which one trusts God will grant eternal life and the means of obtaining it providing one cooperates. Hope is composed of desire and expectation together with a recognition of the difficulty to be overcome in achieving eternal life.
“…desire and expectation together with a recognition of the difficulty…”
My husband and I sat together over our morning coffee today, and he talked about the things he was hoping to achieve in the next few weeks. He’s a farmer – not the 600-acre, Round-up dependent, mass-production kind of farmer, but the small-scale (just under 2 acres), pesticide-free sort of farmer. He studies extensively, learning how to better prepare the soil to resist disease; how to extend the growing season with hoop houses and cold frames; how to produce really good-tasting vegetables and herbs without killing bees and putting poisons into our environment. You have to have a lot of hope to farm this way. Every farmer is dependent on so many things outside of his or her control, weather being the chief among them. Every farmer has to have hope. But my husband’s type of farmer – one who intentionally works hard to practice good stewardship of God’s creation - hopes for so much more than good weather.
Farmers like my husband hope for the world to wake up to what corporate greed is doing to the land and the living things dependent on it. They hope it will really begin to matter that large agricultural corporations can sue a farmer for saving his own seed for planting. They hope that people will increasingly value food that is free of chemicals and grown for taste and nutrition rather than shelf life. They hope that they can earn enough through their labor-intensive work to allow them to continue to till and plant and harvest.
There are many kinds of hope – all of them filled with desire and expectation…(and)… a recognition of the difficulty. It’s a beautiful virtue, our hope. It’s strong and filled with vitality and love. It’s no wonder that hope springs eternal. Let’s pray that the rest of Pope’s line of poetry is not realized: “Man never is, but always to be blessed.” I pray for the blessing to become reality – and not remain an always-elusive future that never comes to be.
The Concise Catholic Dictionary defines hope as: The theological virtue which is a supernatural gift bestowed by God through which one trusts God will grant eternal life and the means of obtaining it providing one cooperates. Hope is composed of desire and expectation together with a recognition of the difficulty to be overcome in achieving eternal life.
“…desire and expectation together with a recognition of the difficulty…”
My husband and I sat together over our morning coffee today, and he talked about the things he was hoping to achieve in the next few weeks. He’s a farmer – not the 600-acre, Round-up dependent, mass-production kind of farmer, but the small-scale (just under 2 acres), pesticide-free sort of farmer. He studies extensively, learning how to better prepare the soil to resist disease; how to extend the growing season with hoop houses and cold frames; how to produce really good-tasting vegetables and herbs without killing bees and putting poisons into our environment. You have to have a lot of hope to farm this way. Every farmer is dependent on so many things outside of his or her control, weather being the chief among them. Every farmer has to have hope. But my husband’s type of farmer – one who intentionally works hard to practice good stewardship of God’s creation - hopes for so much more than good weather.
Farmers like my husband hope for the world to wake up to what corporate greed is doing to the land and the living things dependent on it. They hope it will really begin to matter that large agricultural corporations can sue a farmer for saving his own seed for planting. They hope that people will increasingly value food that is free of chemicals and grown for taste and nutrition rather than shelf life. They hope that they can earn enough through their labor-intensive work to allow them to continue to till and plant and harvest.
There are many kinds of hope – all of them filled with desire and expectation…(and)… a recognition of the difficulty. It’s a beautiful virtue, our hope. It’s strong and filled with vitality and love. It’s no wonder that hope springs eternal. Let’s pray that the rest of Pope’s line of poetry is not realized: “Man never is, but always to be blessed.” I pray for the blessing to become reality – and not remain an always-elusive future that never comes to be.
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