Find the river

I love this time of year.  Increasingly more so than Xmas even with all its twinkly sparkliness.  Easter is definitely my new favourite.  Why?  Well, I think it’s the most hopeful time of year.  The clocks have just sprung forward giving us lighter evenings.  The birds are singing and there’s a general sense of things coming back to life.  However it’s the sense of hope that Easter brings that I love the most. And it’s hope that I want to focus on.

I was at church today and as you might imagine everyone was in a jubilant mood (there were three confetti cannons!). I expected the sermon to be equally uplifting so you can imagine my surprise when the pastor opened with how terrible it all was. People were sad, they were bereft, the church was about to get much worse.

I began to wonder if I was in the right place.  As he went on I thought about making a sign saying ‘Easter = happy’.  Spiritual nourishment it was not.  Then he quoted this by Jurgen Moltmann:

‘That is why faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience’ 

Ok…… This was interesting.

Now I don’t want to get into the detail of the rest of the sermon – it turned out to be one of the most inspiring and uplifting ones I’ve heard in ages.  I also think that some reading this won’t be particularly interested in it. So why I am mentioning it? In that moment it challenged every idea I had about hope.

I had always took hope to be this thing that you could hold onto tightly like an unshakeable solid foundation giving you security.

Hope is also something that I have thought to have both spiritual and non spiritual connotations.  For example every year I hope that the Pittsburgh Steelers will win the Superbowl. My hope never gives up until its clear they are not in the Playoffs.  I digress…. Everyone has something they are hopeful for whether it be a cure for cancer or merely that it won’t snow again.  To suggest that it causes unrest and impatience came as a bit of a shock.

In reality this is something I’ve been struggling with recently in my day to day work.  In particular the work I’m doing around education.  In the main I would consider myself to be a positive person.  When it comes to getting things done the hope is to get people to see the why in order to get to the how.

So I was surprised when I found myself telling an audience at a delirium conference that i was getting grumpy and a little fed up. I felt like I was always preaching to the converted.  We have yet to see delirium education imbedded into induction programs. It is yet to be made a priority within our clinical governance structures. We also still talk about other quality clinical indicators but not delirium.

This frustration continued into the leadership course the following week where I was challenged to essentially get my own house in order before tackling bigger or loftier projects.

I found myself thinking about a comment from my previous workplace in which I was told ‘you can’t be a prophet in your own land’.  Was history repeating itself?

I asked a colleague how they thought I was perceived by others ‘Challenging, very challenging but in a good way!’

I was beginning to loose hope.  Not faith but hope that anything I did was ever going to matter or make a difference.

‘That is why faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience’

Today on this beautiful spring day I have renewed hope.  A sense that my deep dissatisfaction with how things are done will inspire unrest in others.  I hope it will make people impatient for things to be better.

After all we’re closer now than light years to go…….