Hope
Symbols
“Hope
requires a very careful symbolization. It must not be expressed too
fully in the present tense because hope one can touch and handle is
not likely to retain its promissory call to a new future. Hope
expressed only in the present tense will no doubt be co-opted by the
managers of this age.”
Walter
Brueggemann (The Prophetic Imagination, 2nd Edition)
Brueggemann explains in
The Prophetic Imagination, the means by which people of faith
can move from despair to freedom. He maintains that we become
illiterate in the language of hope, and that the offering of symbols
helps to break the downward spiral. Such symbols cannot be
futuristic, but rather must be those of deepest memory; those that
have always been a beacon and touchstone for this particular
community. Returning to the deep symbols, the people “will
discern that hope is not a late, tacked-on hypothesis to serve a
crisis but rather the primal dimension of every memory of this
community.”
Being of Jungian
orientation, symbols are my bread and butter. In our recent political
season, our candidates cleverly tapped into symbolism by adopting
slogans that could be picked up by their followers and shouted with
gusto. “Make America Great Again” harked back to a time some,
mostly Caucasians, remember nostalgically as “a chicken in every
pot;” when most people had a job, worked hard and reaped the
benefits of a growing economy. It was a time when institutions and
industries hired young, and then took care of their employees for life.
People, at least, white people, felt secure because their lives were
predictable.
The other campaign's
slogan, “Stronger Together,” was more reflective of present
realities, of a blended, global community, where black and white and
brown people share the benefits of society. It celebrated an inclusive world
in which the categories of identity are less starkly drawn. People of
color are now evoking their own freedom symbols from the gospel
themes of the abolition era, and the civil unrest of the 1960's. The
fact that “Stronger Together” represented the present, far from
strengthening it, made it less palatable. The denial of the reality
of a global village has been deep and harsh.
I find myself turning to
even older symbols—the descending dove of Spirit, the fish, the new
moon, even various colored dots like the art of aboriginal and native
peoples. Our oldest symbols offer centering, grounding, soul-level
security. When we evoke them they fit like our oldest pair of jeans.
Brueggemann wrote, “In offering symbols the prophet had two
tasks. One is to mine the memory of this people and educate them to
use the tools of hope. The other is to recognize how singularly
words, speech, language and phrase shape consciousness and define
reality.” Some of the word symbols that I'm seeing now are the
signs of protesters saying, “We are a country of immigrants,” and
“We welcome immigrants and refugees.” They evoke the memory of
who we are, and what we have always stood for. Hope emerging.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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