Fall 2020 | Seeking the Light: Notes on Hope - Introduction and Cover Photo

This year will go down as a historic test of our health, our economy, our complacency about racial progress, our electoral politics, ecological practices, the depths of sorrow and comeback. Year 2020 has also been a test of hope, which seemed caught off guard, as if the word had been diluted over the decades—confused with false uplift, optimism, or wishful thinking. 

In this Reflections issue, however, writers find hope in in the teeth of catastrophe or worry—clarifying it in moments of daily routine and honest reckonings with despair, in political commitment and heroes of history, or in the cadences of scripture and the rhythms of earth. It’s found in a prayer vigil, a quilt project, a civil rights pilgrimage, a gospel hymn, in the cherry blossoms that return in spring despite everything.

“Hope is not a mere projection of good ideas into the future or simply a wish for a good outcome,” says Almeda Wright, YDS associate professor of religious education. “Hope is an active orientation toward the good. Hope reminds me to look beyond the current situation to a sustaining force that is much bigger than any pandemic.”

Cover photo by Stijn te Strake/Unsplash