When we roared in approval at rallies in the run up to the 2008 election, I don't think most of us really considered how hard it would be to make health care reform a reality. But since the President first began the debate last summer, the battle for basic health care for all Americans has reached a level of vitriol that defied all expectations. We have seen town hall meetings with cries of Nazism and socialism, death panels fear mongers, and tea partiers all getting wild with anger (egged on by Republicans) about legislation that will simply put America on equal footing with every other major developed nation -- namely health care for every citizen. The fight has been so tough that, I admit, there were moments when I lost hope that any progress on this basic human right was possible in our country. Sarah Palin's dagger went to the heart when she asked how that "hopey-changey" thing was working out for the President.
Now that this major victory has been won in Congress today, I realize that what I really had at the start of President Obama's term was not hope, but optimism -- and optimism won't carry you very far in politics, faith or life. Hope is different than optimism. Optimism assumes that everyone will be happy clappy and go along with the program, and then crumples when they don't. In contrast, hope inspires endurance, and requires serious work. Optimism is a luxury for those who can afford to lose. Hope is for people for whom there is no alternative but to persevere. It was not optimism that carried the great civil rights movements of the last century, it was hope that made a way when there was no way, and squeezed justice out of the bitter fruit of persecution. Hope is tied to a belief in something greater than oneself (if only the collective wisdom of humanity) that wills this world to be a better place. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote "Hope is the faith that, together, we can make things better. Optimism is a passive virtue, hope is an active one. It takes no courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of courage to have hope. Hope is the knowledge that we can choose; that we can learn from our mistakes and act differently next time. That history is not a trash bag of random coincidences blown open by the wind, but a long slow journey to redemption."
The promise that progress is possible, and that history is kind to those who work for the common good echoes the famous profession of hope by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. who reminded us that the "arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice." Today's vote also calls to mind this quote by one of Dr. King's and President Obama's moral mentors, the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who wrote: "Nothing worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing that is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing that we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone, therefore we are saved by love."
Today is a great day arrived at by means of determined hope, enduring faith and the implementation of love. The United States has taken a step forward to truly reflect the words of the pledge of allegiance which promises liberty and justice for ALL. My guess is that even those who are angry today will begin to see the light once they see the benefits of this health care reform in their own lives and in the lives of their loved ones.
There are many more battles ahead -- on immigration, financial reforms, the environment and Don't Ask, Don't Tell in the military. Perhaps after this first year of Obama's Presidency we are less optimistic that change will come easy, but we can be more hopeful that change is possible if we persevere and continue to follow that moral arc of history. Let's get back to work.
Paul Raushenbush: What Kind of Life Do You Want to Live? Reflections On Graduation Day
Living the life we want to live means that in those moments of apparent failure, loss, and setback, we see in even more detail the beauty and possibility of those things that are within our means to influence and enhance.
Ray Waddle: Faith and Financial America's Moral Compass
People of faith are the last people standing with the power to inject spiritual realism into the financial conversation. They need to find their bearings again, fast.
Dr. David P. Gushee: Christian Convictions And The Health Care Law
It has been a week since the historic vote to pass health care reform. Here are a few clear convictions I have developed on what has transpired, offered from the perspective of a Christian ethicist.
Health Care Vote: LIVE UPDATES
House Health Care Vote: Breaking Updates
Health Care Vote Illustrates Partisan Divide - NYTimes.com
Frank Schaeffer: Obama's Health Care Victory Puts His Critics to Shame
News Analysis - Obama's Health Care Victory Carries a Cost ...
You are supposed to hold your beliefs cynically--that is, as materialistic objects that you have a kind of ironic distance towards. Like the stuff on your coffee table. Ideology doesn't just tell you what to believe, it tells you how to believe, as any good advertising exec can tell you. Ads sell people to products--they create fantasies of the kind of person you'll be if you enjoy a certain product. In the same way, ideology codes for beliefs about belief. The health care victory is a major, major blow to the injunction to be cynical.
We have grown in many ways. However difficult the
challenge, no matter how high the hill to climb, neither
distance or race, have ever ceased our enduring love
for freedom, hope, change and the never ending spirit
of that timeless crede yes we can.The president said it
well,and not only having said it , but acted on it.Never waivering
even in the darkest of days.He rose above to a higher place,
where love is above all else. With the winds of change at his back, and
a spirit so strong and unbreakable to lead us through the darkness,
and into the light.Though challenges remain, and the path still
long and winding. We must rise together in love for all mankind,
to build a better world, a safer world, and a loving world. Where
money does not rule,nor does greed.Rather the true meaning of
human nature and the sole reason that we live, to LOVE............
res8d7ss 03/23/2010
Time to build upon it, and let Republicans continue to say NO without an alternative and November will show that this strategy will not work. I am in favor of bi-partisan solution, civil discussion, and action. The work action being very important.
HOPE.....Yes We Can!!
Michelle Obama is the one fighting the bigger more important fight with her campaign to reduce obesity in children. This needs to be expanded to everyone in America. Because if you still have 2/3 of Americans who are overweight and sick you still have a healthcare crisis regardless of the legislative fixes you put in place. To learn more and to find specific resources we can all use to make an even bigger impact on our nation's healthcare system please read my article on healthcare reform below. It turns out that we all individually have much more control over what happens about this issue than we think.
A healthcare professional's view on health care reform - http://bit.ly/9QLV8
I think he does.
Well, Sarah, it's working quite well. Thanks for asking.
"if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."
Once again the grown-ups have prevailed... and I couldn't be happier for that fact.
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An amazing twist, I must admit.That Evangelicals use of the Scriptures to make points against "Christian Charity" so as to conflate it with the Rethuglican ideal of "rugged individualism", is stunning.
To use your own analogy, by Christ's attempts to teach people to fish, it would be necessary for all to have equal access to the sea, let alone the tools to accomplish it. Wouldn't that better parallel that which was brought about by this Health-Care legislation? Plus, if you remember, there was the parable of "Loaves and Fishes", whereby Christ fed the multitude. Was he then a Communist; Socialist? What was he? Republican? Democrat? Independent?
The curse of the Evangelical movement is that any tin horn theist can determine for themselves what the Scriptures mean and can thereby contort them to mean anything they want, no matter whether it adheres to Christian precepts, or not.
Conflate on. The entertainment of personal ignorance and self-righteousness, will be the death of the Rethuglican Party. Or,at least, one can hope.
A little poetic license never hurt anyone.
MMM MMM MMM MMM
MMM MMM MMM MMM
YES WE CAN YES WE CAN
YES WE CAN YES WE CAN
THE DUDE FROM CHICAGO IS OUR MAN
Firstly, as someone who has suffered from lifelong clinical depression, I can state from experience that optimism is not passive for me. It is a view that takes effort, focus, and work to maintain. While I understand that it is easier for most people to be optimistic than it is for me personally, it seems to me that optimism is something that everyone must put some effort into maintaining..
I recommend "Learned Optimism" by Martin Seligman. It is an interesting book for several reasons, but the most important for purposes of this discussion is his clinical and experimental work on optimism. To sum up very briefly, an optimistic outlook appears to have a strong effect on being successful in what one sets out to do.
This may, I admit, be nothing more than semantic quibbling - we may be referring to the same idea but labeling it differently.