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Reflections and Resources for Hope in Uncertain times
I have not found this curation of thoughts, poems, writing, music, images in any way easy to put together and write about. I find myself revising, deleting, re-writing and re-thinking as I delve deeper into the concept of hope and into the darkness of our world. I do not want to dwell on the horror, and I do not want to be trite in looking for the light. Hope is not a trite thing. Hope does not deny that which brings despair. It is born out of being with the dark and the despair, hence, I think, my ongoing struggle to find my clarity. I hope you find something in what follows to be thought provoking or inspiring, or just something that chimes with you. As always I would welcome any thoughts or comments you may have.
Gaza
I heard yesterday, May 24th, the news that a medic working in a hospital in Khan Younis in Gaza lost 9 of her children in a bombing raid by Israel’s air-force on her home. . Her remaining child is critical in hospital, and her husband, also a doctor, who had just returned home having driven his wife to work, has a penetrating wound to his head and is also critically ill.(He subsequently died some days later from his wounds.)
In a BBC report Graeme Groom, a British surgeon working in the hospital who operated on her surviving 11-year-old boy, told the BBC reporter that it was "unbearably cruel" that this mother, who spent years caring for children as a paediatrician, could lose almost all her own in a single missile strike.”
I stopped the shower and swore and tried to breathe through the waves of anger and disbelief and sense of overwhelming horror that rose up in me.
Too many times in recent years I have been stopped in my tracks as I’ve heard stories of hitherto unimagined cruelty, acts of such hatred and depravity that I thought were only to be read about in history and would never happen again. How naive I was.
It can feel as if something I thought I understood about the world is being ripped apart.We live in dark times. Frightening times. Times of horror and unbearable pain and loss, affecting so many people.
Yet....I also hear such incredible courage in response to such events. I hear the voices of doctors and nurses, aid workers, journalists amongst the people of Gaza exercising the most astonishing courage and love in being there, risking all with the people of Palestine.
It reminds me of the people who risked their lives to save the Jews from the Nazi’s in the second world war, who put their lives at risk to stop the extermination of a people so displaced, starved, dehumanised and murdered in their millions..
I do not yet know how to hold hope for the people of Gaza, nor all those around the world, including Israel, who are living in fear for their lives. But I am trying to find out
what I do know is that as human beings we have the capacity to act with terrible cruelty and destructiveness, where we lose touch with the humanity of the other entirely. However, and this is where some of my hope lies, we also have the capacity to reach out offering kindness, healing, love, and can do so at great sacrifice to ourselves. When our hearts are open,touched by another’s pain or fear, we can act with great generosity and love, though this is not usually what hits the headlines. .
I hold onto images like that above of children plaing happily on Gaza beach before the atrocity of October 2023 and the subsequent war, as evidence of how we are capable of creating a safe, peaceful environment even in the midst of serious differences and disagreements.
And I also hold onto people like Palestinian , Aziz Abu Sara, and Israeli , Maoz Inon and their astonishing courage in their willingness to hold onto love and a vision of peace together as they live with so much loss , pain and destruction. Please click on the Gaza beach picture above to hear their truly remarkable Ted talk.
When hope gets in the way.
“We will dance with mountains is a course created and run by Bayo Akomolafe, a philosopher, writer, activist, professor of psychology, and executive director of the Emergence Network. In writing about his course he challenges us to re-think our notions , amongst others, surrounding activism, justice, change and hope.
I started to think, “What does he mean about hope getting in the way? “
And where I got to was something about what I call “relentless hope”, and how it binds us to the wanting of something above all else, something that gets in the way of us seeing what else there might be if we let go of the thing we so long for, if we let our desperate grip slacken until we are falling away from the prize we put so much into winning ,, but falling TOWARDS something else, somewhere else.
It's something as a psychotherapist I find myself coming back to over and over as my clients explore what is limiting and stopping them from living the lives and being the people they sense they could be.; a relentless hope for the thing that never happened that should have, for the lost or longed-for childhood love and understanding, and the grief-driven but ultimately liberating process of turning in another direction, lifting one’s head and daring to step forward into the unknown, to move into the terrifying but possibly gloriously contradictory and complex unknown land that lies beyond hope.
As Bayo says:
Dont get me wrong, leaving what is known and familiar, letting go of the hope that things might just change if I work at it hard enough is a challenging notion for all of us.
Bayo's short video about how he encountered this idea with his beautiful young daughter I found both moving and helpful..
Click on the photo above to hear it.
Taking the idea from the personal to the global/ politital level Bayo urges us to question our assumptions about what the world needs, how we have gone about trying to bring about change,, our binary ideas about what actually needs to change. He urges us to turn our assumptions and the questions we ask ourselves on their heads in a way and to do so in the company of others. Its a reformulation for me of a different kind of hope.
This arhythmic howl is by turns soft and bodacious, barely perceptible at times and then impossible to ignore. This ‘tune’ is not music, and yet it is the irresistible stuff music is made of. If we listened, we might hear no discernible lyrics, no convenient message – and yet that is the point: this tune is our permission to fail, an invitation to new reformulations of citizenry. The undoing of an acoustic order. A call to delirious depths. What might failure look like? Where might this generative incapacitation lead us? Who are we and who is here with us? “
You may call it coincidence or something else but as I was thinking about those words I came across a piece of music called “Dancing Mountains” by a french electronic composer called M83. As I listened to the evocative , atmospheric track it suddenly stops and there is apparently silence for over a minute and a half until the music returns.
I love this stopping, this silence, before the music returns., But try as I might i cannot hear the silence. I am sure there is something barely perceptible to be heard; far away deep resonant rhythmic sounds , as if from another place, “an unearthly music ”, that draws me in. I have no idea whether this is real, or my computer, or my ears or something more. But it speaks so directly to Bayo’s last thought: “If we listened, we might hear no discernible lyrics, no convenient message – and yet that is the point...”.
I invite you to listen into the music and the silence and see what you hear!
click here to hear Dancing Mountains by M83.
Bearing the Unbearable.
There are some events, some experiences that are so excoriating, so devastating in their impact that it is almost impossible to imagine how one could go on with any meaningful life. How does a person come to terms with something that wipes out that which was the most precious, that which they have loved and cherished and wrapped their hearts and soul around??
John Hunt, racing commentator for the BBC lost his wife and two grown up daughters in the most nightmarish of ways as an ex boyfriend of one of the girls held them captive in their home and murdered all three of them with a crossbow, trying and failing to lure John to be killed too.
I don’t think anyone ever “gets over” the death of someone close to them, a spouse, partner, child, or parent when that death is untimely. And when there are multiple deaths, as in John’s case, through such a targeted, violent and depraved act, it’s even harder to imagine how anyone finds a way to make peace with life again.
#after such events we are never, ever the same again. It’s as if a tsunami breaks on the shores of our life and wreaks a devastation. Everything is in pieces. Somehow we have to live in that devastation until the shock and the reality of the pain and the loss become something we can more fully take in, until it has a permanence as part of our story, until we start to believe we might just be able to live with it , until our legs , our brains and our hearts can all work together to allow us to stand and start to walk towards something else.
Here are Johns words from his victim statement which he read out to his family’s murderer in court, describing how going on became possible for him.
I am lucky. I have the most wonderful daughter; Amy who gives me such focus and purpose. I have Gareth and Alex. I have my extended family, reaching far beyond my mum, brothers and sister, aunts and uncles and cousins. I have many friends who watch out for me on an hourly basis. Carol's friends are mine and I now have a renewed relationship with Hannah's and Louise's best friends. I will always be there for them and they will be there for me too....So whilst I am so badly damaged, I am determined to see what my future is, surrounded by so many amazing people. And the chance to do this has been gifted to me by my incredible Hannah. I firmly believe that, had she not managed to show such amazing physical and mental strength in raising the alarm after you fatally injured her, then I would have been your fourth victim that day. Hannah handed me a second chance, one that she worked so hard to achieve for me. Do you really think after what she did for me, I will slight her memory and example by just giving up?
Even though the days are difficult and feel on many occasions, impossible, I will channel my inner Atticus Finch at all times. He said:
"I want you to see what real courage is. Instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you are licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
I am struck by many things in that statement but non more so than the connections with others John speaks of which have seen him through, the way he sees himself as part of a comunity of people, all of whom have been devatstated by their loss and how it is the sharing of that, their commitment to each other that has been so important.
Another utterly devastating event was the terrible and terrifying bush fires in what was called the Black Summer of 2019/20 in Australia. There was massive loss of life, human and animal, homes, habitat, ancient landscapes and treasures that are gone forever. Those fires which raged for weeks broke so many people, those who witnessed and those who tried to save themselves, their loved ones, their animals , their homes, their land. The scars remain on the land and will remain in people’s hearts forever.
There is an extraordinary performance of a poem written in the aftermath of the fires, with an incredible didgeridoo accompaniment which I found both moving and inspiring which speaks of the pain and devasation of the loss and the way coming together is what will enable those affected to continue living and find their way forward.
Click on the picture above of the fires and press play to find Blue Robinson's poem and William Barton on Didgeridoo.
Malala and Meriope.
Malala Yousafzai , the young Pakistani girl became an activist at the age of 11 in response to the Taliban making it a crime for girls to be educated. She won recognition from Archbishop Desmond Tutu and from her country’s Prime Minister for her bravery in speaking up for the rights of children to be educated. Then in October 2012 a cowardly masked Taliban gunman boarded her school bus , asked who Malala was and shot her in the side of her head. She woke up ten days later in a Birmingham hospital and her first thought she said was “Thank God I’m alive”. A few months later in a speech to the UN, she spoke of the Taliban’s efforts to silence her:
weakness, fear and hopelessness died,
strength, fervour and courage was born.”
I don’t think I have ever heard such a clear strong voice ringing out across the world as Malala’s was that day. It reminds me of the quote attributed to St Augustine:
“Hope has two beautiful daughters, and their names are anger and courage.”
Malala embodied the beauty of hope that day for her anger about the injustice done to all who are denied education which motivated her to act, and she has continued to do so with great courage, changing the lives of countless children. At the age of 17 she was awarded the Nobel peace prize for her ceaseless work through her foundation to bring pressure to bear in all countries to ensure the education of all children.
Please click on the picture above by Simon Davis (dfid) to hear Malala’s speech to the UN less than a year after she was shot.
Another woman of courage is Meriope Mills, mother of Martha, 13, who died after a protracted time in hospital of sepsis when medical staff had repeatedly failed to listen to her concerns or diagnose her infection. I will never forget her interview with Martha Kearney on BBC Radio 4 as she described what had happened and spoke of her grief, her guilt, the void left by Martha, and her determination that this series of mistakes, this failure to listen to patients and their families should not continue to happen in our hospitals.
Her grief was palpable , in her voice, her words, her difficulty talking, her tears, but also her clarity and purpose were alsoso present , in her determination that no other person or family member should have to go through what she and her husband had, as they felt utterly helpless in the face of the deterioration of their beautiful, talented daughter.
This sort of avoidble loss has an impact far far beyond the immediate loss and grief. In a guardian article in September 22, two years after Martha’s death, Meriope says:
Mariope began a campaign to set up Martha’s Law, the right of every patient or advocate to ask for a second opinion if concerned about their treatment in hospital, and posters explaining Martha’s law can be seen in hospitals all over the country as Marth’a’s law is supported by the NHS as one way of safeguarding people in hospital.
So here’s the hope, in Martha’s name, that out of a tragedy others will live and take their place in the world who otherwise might not have done.
Below is the Martha’s law poster.
You can listen to Meriope’s Radio 4 interview at
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0gbjmv5
. Like many things on this page it’s not an easy listen so choose if and when to listen.
