Hope in a Time of Fear

A few years ago, I heard Archbishop Desmond Tutu speak at a Los Angeles benefit for a South African project. He'd been fighting prostate cancer, was tired that evening and had taken a nap before his talk. But when Tutu addressed the audience he became animated, expressing amazement that his long-oppressed country had provided the world with an unforgettable lesson in reconciliation and hope. Afterward, a few other people spoke, then a band from East LA took the stage and launched into an irresistibly rhythmic tune. People started dancing. Suddenly I noticed Tutu, boogying away in the middle of the crowd. I'd never seen a Nobel Peace Prize winner, still less one with a potentially fatal illness, move with such joy and abandonment. Tutu, I realized, knows how to have a good time. Indeed, it dawned on me that his ability to recognize and embrace life's pleasures helps him face its cruelties and disappointments, be they personal or political.

Few of us will match Tutu's achievements, but we'd do well to learn from someone who spent years challenging apartheid's brutal system of human degradation, yet has remained lighthearted and free of bitterness. Any clear-eyed view of the world recognizes that grave threats exist: war, environmental destruction, the runaway power of corporate greed. To make matters worse, those in power often take advantage of real threats, like terrorism, by exploiting fear and feelings of vulnerability for their own gain. Today fear so dominates our society that Americans hesitate to speak out against the very actions that make other people hate us, worried that they may be deemed unpatriotic or simply ignored, marginalized. When people begin to silence themselves, democracy itself is imperiled.

The antidote to such fear and silence is hope: defiant, resilient, persistent hope, of the kind that Tutu embodies. In this vision, we act no matter what the seeming odds, both to be true to ourselves and to open up new possibilities. As Jim Wallis, editor of the evangelical social justice magazine Sojourners, writes, "Hope is believing in spite of the evidence, then watching the evidence change."

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