25 Jun Hope Springs…from Activity
“Hope springs eternal” is an English proverb that originated in an 18thcentury poem by Alexander Pope. It doesn’t, though. We have to create hope through what we do.
This is the message I and many others are taking out to people we meet—from talks we give (“Creating Communities of Hope”) to new organizations launched by East Side Institute Associates (Performing Communities de Esperanza) to the upcoming Institute online Revolutionary Conversation, “Building Hope When Things Are Falling Apart.” Led by fellow performance activist Dan Friedman, the course (which runs July 13 to August 12) is a rare opportunity for people who don’t know each other to create of themselves a group that creates hope.
Here is how Dan shares his “hopes” for the course:
In response to often being accused of writing gloomy, seemingly hopeless scripts, the German playwright Heiner Müller once said in an interview, “I am neither a dope dealer nor a hope dealer.”
I don’t believe it’s possible to will our way to hopefulness. What we can do is build new kinds of relationships, new kinds of organizations, new kinds of activities and, through the process of creating them, begin to discover alternatives to the nightmarish world we find ourselves in.
We’ll be discussingthe activity of hope. Much of the material we’ll be reading and discussing are excerpts of interviews I’ve conducted with hope builders from India to South Africa to Colombia to the US-Mexican border.
In this period of extended war, famine, forced migration and growing tyranny, I can’t think of anything better to do than to be part of a conversation about the activity of hope with people all over the world. I’d love you to join me.
And if you aren’t able to, sign up someone else who needs this kind of conversation!
loisholzman
Posted at 20:21h, 25 JuneThanks for you wonderful – and rhythmic – comment, Philip!
Philip J. Malebranche
Posted at 20:05h, 25 JuneKing David, in the Bible, was a blues man. He demonstrates this, for instance, in Psalm 142: “I cry aloud with my voice to the Lord; I make supplication with my voice to the Lord. I pour out my complaint before Him; I declare my trouble before Him. When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, You knew my path.” You will read more of this–his despair–until David makes a turn of emotion, with an eye on hope, praying: “Bring my soul out of prison, so that I may give thanks to Your name; the righteous will surround me, for You will deal bountifully with me.” The “righteous will surround me” is the group therapy aspect of his healing. He does not blame God for the handiwork of God’s enemies. God–and the community–remains faithful, and is the source of salvation.
Philip J. Malebranche
Posted at 19:53h, 25 JuneOne source of hope that we may sometimes forget is blues music and jazz. A fundamental component is that depression is only part of its definition. Blues music is incomplete if an element of hope is missing. Albert Murray, in his classic, “Stomping the Blues,” asserts that, with complaint comes the determination to overcome. A hardscrabble life always precedes the resilient response to it. Murray even seems to add that one endures with an added dose of elegance and nonchalance. “Entertainment” and “merriment” are ineluctable components of the blues. The persistent closing of dance halls and jazz clubs would be part of a grand design to muffle and hide, I suggest, the resilience, merriment and talent of African-Americans, other non-Whites and the whites who play with, and love, them. A dance hall, today, would be a fantastic multi-racial spot. Love would abound. Some detest the thought and vision and consequences. Hope can “spring” from the dance floor.