For us, the biblical readings are a magnifying glass that not only enlarges the catastrophes, but also focuses the heat which ignites hope. Sheila Cassidy, the doctor who, under Pinochet, survived imprisonment in a Chilean gaol and now works as a palliative care specialist in Plymouth, described recently how twenty years ago she blew into an English Benedictine monastery on the outskirts of Liverpool. The previous guest had left in the room a quotation from Robert Speight s book, The Property Basket . It struck an immediate chord in Sheila, and she knew intuitively that it was so true that she must commit it to heart. She has continued over the years, she says, to unwrap the Advent gift of an unknown guest.
Hope is always humble and frequently disappointed.
Hope is not the house. Hope is not even the hands that build the house. Hope is the hands which shape the rubble into some sort of shelter for the night when the house is ruined. It cannot be separated from its theological sisters, Faith and Love, but is not to be confused with optimism which is a conceited and secular cousin inherited like a passing bout of influenza from the ease and pride of life. Sheila remembered how two of her fellow prisoners helped her to reshape the rubble of her courage when she lay exhausted, terrified and bleeding after torture by the Chilean police.