'twixt Hope and Despair

Dare to believe.  Sounds like a good motto.  And yet there is a need to reconcile what is in our head with the reality of life that we encounter.  Hope springs eternal, despair comes with the night.  As a person of faith I am drawn toward a life of hope.  For good reason.  The moments of grace that have come into my life as pure surprise are many.  From my mother's womb you have cared for me, O God!  We know so little about the future that to surrender to our fears is simply not called for.  How many times have seemingly insurmountable odds been overcome by God's grace?  Too many to count.

And yet at times the painful reality of life also sets in.  To assert, as a matter of faith, that suffering will not overcome us can seem naive.  Truth speaks of suffering far too often.  Sometimes the news is not good.  Poverty is real.  Fears sometimes are realized.

As a pastor, thinking back over all the words of comfort I tried to offer, the words I most regret were "We fear the worst, and it almost never happens."  These words I spoke to a young man who was getting tested for a weakness that had developed in one leg.  A couple of months later he was dead, the result of a super aggressive brain tumor.  Evil happens.  It doesn't ALWAYS work out.

Fear exists only in our minds.  But I suppose we could say the same for hope.  The struggle I'm faced with today is how to negotiate the  uncertainties of the future when that natural presence of fear and hope is coupled with being bipolar.

I once bluntly declared, "God flunked chemistry!"  It was my reaction to the delicate chemical balance that has to be present in our brain, but all too often isn't.  Of course, we're not too good at chemistry either, otherwise we could easily restore the brain chemistry to a healthy balance and mental illness would evaporate.

For one who is bipolar, sometimes mania masquerades as hope.  We can solve the problem of world hunger through hydroponic gardening.  Everyone self sufficient for their own food.  That was the deep conviction of one who was bipolar.  During one manic episode I became convinced that the entire Church could be transformed by adopting the twelve step model of AA.  The Kingdom of God is at hand.  And all we needed to do was to reclaim in a powerful way the rite of confession and forgiveness practiced in church basements across the country by alcoholics in recovery.  Hope springs eternal.  Either that, or mania has set in.

And then there are our fears, and the despair that often accompanies them.  Sometimes we are afraid because there are some very real threats out there.  And then there are also those times when the darkness that comes over the world is not real.  Its not that 'hordes of devils fill the land', its simply that the chemistry of our brains is off balance, and we are in a depressed episode.  Hang on for a while.  It will be alright.

When is hope a gift of God's grace?  And when is it simply a matter of the unbridled optimism of a manic state?  When is fear a healthy survival tool amid life's real threats?  And when is it simply the result of brain chemistry run amok?

No answers today.  Just a commitment to trudge onward in the midst of it all.