“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.” ― Barbara Kingsolver
In 2017 after Trump became president, I started reading Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism. The book felt chillingly heartbreakingly shatteringly timely. At the moment, many viewed parallels between Trump’s ascendance and historical ascensions of authoritarianism as overblown and alarmist. Today, the story is different. Now I frequently encounter discussions of Arendt in the mainstream; people raising the prospect that she is a voice for this moment as we are poised to potentially lose touch with democracy.
We see a veering toward autocracy interwoven with many trends that are by now so familiar they hardly need repeating—all culminating in an insurrection on our capitol and a recasting of the insurrectionists as victims and hostages. It has become so banal, to use Arendt's now-famous adjective
These days, I feel as concerned as ever. More concerned than when I picked up Arendt’s book in 2017. But I’ve also been pondering the subject of hope. What does it mean to have hope? I come from a tradition that expresses hope—even when terrible things are quite clearly about to happen.
At times we’re in positions of knowing things trend in a bad direction. {Read remainder of article on Patheos HERE.}