hope

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American essayist, said "nothing great is ever achieved without enthusiasm." What a deconstructed culture lacks, because of its deep cynicism and pessimism about reality, is a basic confidence and enthusiasm that is necessary to start almost anything. You cannot begin with mere criticism or againstness - or it finally turns against your own group (witness the later stages of most angry revolutions, even much of the work of the `Protest'ant Reformation...). The brittle or negative personality finally breaks against itself and its own type. You can only build on life, and not on death. 

I will always cherish my early years among the youth of the New  Jerusalem community in Cincinnati. If we were nothing else we were enthusiastic! There was belief, there was trust, there was positive energy - everything was not immediately critiqued, analyzed and called into question. I always said, "let's be free to say yes before we say no." Over the years my appreciation for how profound that truth is has deepened. The AA saying that "analysis is paralysis" indicates a learned pattern that many educated people need to unlearn. Most of us are not free to say yes before we say no. Our first response is normally "no": "I don't trust that. I don't like that. I don't agree with that." The word `enthusiasm' (en-theos in Greek) means `filled with God'. I'm not encouraging mindless enthusiasm, but the enthusiasm that is based on intelligence and wisdom and that great gift of hope. Hope is a participation in the very life of God."

from Richard Rohr `Hope  Against Darkness'.   quote sent to me and others by Matt Rees - thanks, Matt