Is Hope Worth the Risk?
As we think about the upcoming year, we know that hope can feel elusive. Weighed down by uncertainty, exhaustion, and a world filled with division and stress, it’s easy to wonder if hope is even worth holding onto.
Hope carries heartache. Longing for something better can feel vulnerable, especially when past disappointments and cynicism weigh heavy on our hearts. It can feel safer to let go of hope than to risk the ache of unfulfilled desire.
But as Dan Allender shares, hope isn’t passive or naïve. It’s “a kind of patience that does not erase desire, but has a resilience to remain in the movement toward the dream that hope holds, with a kind of defiance—a willingness to say, I don’t just wait passively, I wait in a way in which I’m willing to risk on the anticipation of the arrival of what my heart most deeply desires.”
Hope doesn’t deny the pain of the past or present; it’s a courageous choice to believe in the future possibility of good. And it often begins small—a moment of gratitude, a glimpse of beauty, or the connection we find with others.
This year, we can choose hope—not because it’s easy, but because it opens us up to something deeper, truer, and worth desiring.
Episode Transcript:
Dan: Rachael, there are times where you get things in the mail and you’re surprised. Would that not be the case.
Rachael: Every once in a while? Yeah.
Dan: Well, I got a package and it was one of those gifts that as I open it, I’m looking for who sent a gift? It’s Christmas, so you think it’s a gift from one of my family. But there was no mention as to who sent it. But when I opened it up, it was a lovely gray sweatshirt. And on the front were these four letters, HOPE, hope. And I just, when I opened it up and looked at it, it was like, this is so sweet to get this gift from whom I do not know if it happens to be one of our listeners anonymously sending lovely attire, but with a marking that feels so relevant. I’ve been thinking about hope really for months now, and I’m thrilled that we’re going to be, shall we say, entering into this conversation as we begin the year. And happy New Year to you.
Rachael: Yeah, happy New Year to you as well. But I’ll be honest, I feel such a deep resistance to moving into 2025. So as much as I’m looking forward to this conversation, I too can say I’ve been thinking a lot about hope and perhaps wrestling with hope.
Dan: So as we jump into this new year, I think almost every year we should begin with the issue of hope because there is a kind of despair that comes for many in the winter given the political process, given the realities of a world that does feel like it is in shambles. And so having this discussion is not meant to pump people up, but to be aware of what is the foundation for being able to grow hope and to see hope grow within us and within the world itself. We can say it as simply as this without hope, there is nothing but despair. And despair itself is in and of itself, not only a turning away but a denial of the goodness of God in the land of the living. So to me, I need to be thinking about hope as I begin the year. And so when you think about what’s the nature of hope, where does your mind and heart go?
Rachael: It’s funny because probably where my mind initially goes is what is not hope? Because I think I had to have such a transformation of what hope was because I think so much of my early world hope was really probably coming out of a lot of privilege and was meant to be this kind of optimism. And even the way I would’ve heard what you initially said, despair is a turning against God and the goodness of God in the land of the living I would’ve heard basically, if you don’t just feel like everything’s going to be amazing, then you are in despair. And so what I think about hope now is just how much more gritty and makes me think of Austin Channing Brown’s book, I’m Still Here, but she talks about the shadow of hope or hope in the shadows. In some ways it’s like that language of Paul hoping against hope is much more become how I experience hope. I am grateful for hope. I am not fond of hope. It often keeps me in a kind of agony and labor pains. So I do, I think a lot about labor pains when I think about hope.
Dan: Well, you can’t help but think about labor pains not only in terms of your birthing, but also in terms of Romans 8. And that’s why I think of it as a form of this interplay of desire, anticipation, and desire, but within that agony. And so the agony is I have a hope that is so deep and it’s not yet, therefore it leaves me in a level of tension. But also the hope is so deep that there really is a growth of innocence, not naivete, not false optimism, but a sense of I cannot wait. I cannot wait. And that childlike, I cannot wait, and yet I am… waiting. And that reality of patience, a kind of patience that does not erase desire, but has a resilience to remain in the movement toward the dream that hope holds, but with a kind of defiance, a willingness to say, I don’t just wait passively, I wait in a way in which I’m willing to risk on the anticipation of the arrival of what it’s my heart most deeply desires. So as you hear all that, I’d love to get your response.
Rachael: No, I absolutely agree. I think that sense of, yeah, anticipation, we just came out of the season of advent, and that’s a season where we actually practice anticipation and we let our hearts actually practice innocence and desire and the interplay of those things. I can say I actually feel like I am a pretty patient person and have cultivated more resilience there than I ever wanted just based on certain things I’ve had to be really patient for that I never thought I would have to be patient for. And yeah, the risk involved, the defiance involved with hope, it’s like where it takes me as I think the connection of hope to love and to faith. And we talk a lot about that. You’ve written so much about that and introduced those categories to me in such fresh, new relational ways. And I think that that’s also where my mind goes. So often we think about hope in really individualistic ways. I have to hope just for my own hopes, my own personal hopes or maybe my families. But when you let your heart love in the way we’re most meant to, where hope becomes something so far beyond my own needs being met, my own deliverance, but actually the making right of all things like the restoration of everything, the liberation of people, the flourishing of all people, the ceasing of injustice and oppression. We just got out of the Christmas season where we’re singing songs about that. That’s what our hope is. And so I actually find it more challenging when I let that deeper hope for the restoration of all things, to hold onto innocence and desire because I feel the mockery of it. Like how foolish. But then I also, it’s like, okay, this is going to sound so stupid, this is going to sound so trite, but our UPS delivery woman… if my neighbor is not home, I live in Philadelphia in a row house, so the street is two feet from your door. So it’s like package theft on steroids, and if my neighbor is not home, the delivery lady in the Year of Our Lord 2025, will knock on our door and say, “Hey, your neighbor’s not home. Are you okay if I leave the package with you guys? I just don’t want it to get stolen.” And she has been doing this for a couple of weeks, especially around the holidays, and there was something about this very, what I would say is it should just be a standard gesture, but it’s not right because it’s not how our world works that a person who’s tasked with carrying out these deliveries would take the time or even have the luxury of time to knock on a neighbor’s door to have some awareness that you’re the kind of neighbor who would be trustworthy with a person’s package like she’s paying attention. And there’s something about this very simple gesture that actually the other day jarred me out of a moment of despair of just trying to remember that there actually are many people who are very human-size and capable of love. And it was such a simple gesture, but it felt so loving and so kind. It made me feel like you can’t just write off all of humanity as wicked and selfish and given over to this capitalist industrial-complex where basically you don’t get to be human. And so I think about these moments that come so often, that demand that I grow hope, and they don’t often come in grand gestures. So often they come in the midst of the mundane.
Dan: Well, slight confrontation. I don’t think that’s at all small. It’s so sweet and deep. Becky was in a busy moment shopping at our sort of neighborhood grocery store. And the moment where two carts come almost to that moment where you’re not quite sure who gets the right to be able to be the next person, and Becky just sort of slowed down and looked at the woman said, I’m not in a hurry, you go ahead. And the woman looked at her and went.. what? And almost like she was angry for the generosity, and she said, are you serious? She thought there was going to be combat as to who got the opportunity to pay for the groceries next. And Becky just looked at her and just said, really, you go. And she said, I can’t believe it. Thank you. Just how hungry we are, I think as a people, as a world, just to have enough sweet taste of something that gives us an anticipation that there could be a different day and a better day. And in one sense, a taste of heaven on earth. And I think when we begin to invite people into desire, I’m all for new fly rod, but that’s not the richness of desire. A new fly rod for me holds a different level of desire. And that is, I have gotten at least three of my grandchildren into fly fishing from this last summer. And I cannot wait for the season to begin because the privilege of being with them on water and the kinds of things that happen to the human heart when you’re in the presence of beauty and uncertainty and risk and the dynamics of gambling, intermittent reinforcement and the rise of cortisol and the sweet taste of dopamine when you catch a trout, oh my gosh. So when you begin to think about the nature of hope, hope that is in one sense given a mere physicality like, oh, I want a good vacation. No, you don’t. Yes you do. But there’s something more to the hope. And that’s back to what you were putting words to that is the restoration of all things. Some sliver, teeny sliver that there is a taste of goodness in this world. And I think that’s why it’s so easy in one sense to have a false view of hope. That is again, this naive optimism, which almost always spirals you in disappointment into the rise of cynicism where the risk of dreaming just feels too great. And therefore, at least what I’ve found and myself and others is that when you begin to feel that disappointment, things did not work out. All of a sudden the cynicism becomes the shield to, in one sense, annihilate desire and therefore mock the possibility of any more disappointment. Where does all that take you?
Rachael: It feels embodied. I just feel that sense of naivete really being surprised by suffering. And again, that’s maybe where I would say some of the privilege I had, not that I didn’t suffer, but just that in some ways the way I understood biblical hope is that if God was good, you wouldn’t suffer. And so well, why did I hope for that then? And just the way it can take you out and that cynicism. Yeah. For me, I can always tell where I’m actually suffering hope and at war with it where a mockery exists, where there is a mockery of whether it’s, oh, you’re such a fool, Rachael, or this is so childish, or where I have these vows I’m never going to trust again, or I’m never going to be so stupid again, whatever comes. And I have a lot of compassion for those parts of me because it’s not that the wound, I mean there’s language like hope deferred makes the heart sick. It’s not like I’m like, wow, Rachael, pull it together. I understand why those defensive mechanisms are there to diminish desires so that it’s safer, but for whatever reason, the way God made me, it has to get real dark. I have to really take a turn to keep hope under wraps. I have to really kind of come against it with all my defenses. So
Dan: Why do you think that’s the case for you?
Rachael: I dunno.
Dan: Because first of all, I don’t agree with you, but go ahead. No, no.
Rachael: Well then I’m not going to answer your question if you already don’t agree with me.
Dan: Oh, do you want to play in that realm then? No. Since you don’t agree with me, I won’t play.
Rachael: No. Since you have some knowledge or insight that I’m not privy to.
Dan: Well, I think you are a woman of such vast hope that in one sense, I don’t know, a more hopeful person than you. And as a consequence, the heartache that comes when things are not as you have a sense of what it could and really might one day be. So in some ways you bear more the effects of disappointment than most people I know. But not because you’re cynical, but because there’s so much hope that you operate with regard to the people that you love.
Rachael: Yeah, no, that feels true. And I think what I’m trying to say is because of that, I can tell when I’m at war because it is so vast that I have to match it with a vast cynicism so that I can be like, this is not your normal MO. Where are you actually suffering hope in a way that you need support? And I think that’s the piece I would say where I’m learning. I just.. we’re not meant to go it alone. And there are so many seasons where you have to borrow hope from others or trust that there’s a deep well even outside of us.
Dan: Well, and what I find with particularly cynical people who actually are cynical because they don’t have hope, I would say your war is less with cynicism than despair. But in that despair, there is this ache, a deep birthing ache. And I think that’s what I understand in the Romans 8 passage of why Paul utilizes imagery of groaning, groaning of the earth, groaning of our own bodies, and even the groaning of the spirit on our behalf. So again, it’s so central to hear again and again. If you want hope, you will suffer. And if you don’t want to suffer, then you can modulate hope into either external and mechanical and physical things, a new rod, a new computer, or just even something like, I want a better vacation this year. But you’re not actually capturing something of that dream of restoration. What would it look like to have heaven on earth? What you pray when you pray the Lord’s prayer is the centrality to me of what hope holds. Are you willing to ask the question, what would have Christmas been like if there was a taste of heaven on earth? And then you begin to compare and go, well, it was good. I’m glad we had a great time, but it was so far from what my heart hoped. So when we begin to have this intersection of the dreaming of redemption, the dreaming of restoration, of reconciliation of justice, and then be in the face of cruelty at one level, and then just the mundanity of life, that it just doesn’t seem to capture the level of wonder that we were meant for. And that’s why I think people become, when they become cynical, they become more demanding. A sense of, I won’t get much, but I will get something. And you can almost feel the rise of hopelessness in a culture as the other side of a rise of rage, a rise of cruelty, of diminishment, of violence, entitlement. So at least want to make a shift partially to when you think about being around people who don’t seem to have hope, or when you’ve looked in the mirror at those moments, what do you find to be true about some of thes of hopelessness important to name that? Because there are times that you just have to look in the mirror. You may know you don’t have much hope, but what are some of the, shall we say, artifacts, the consequences, the debris that seems to come when you don’t have much hope?
Rachael: Yeah, I think the first thing that comes to mind is probably how you connected to some of the demand, like a kind of consumption, some might say addiction, where addictive processes are just actually in the driver’s seat. There’s kind of a desperation for more or to numb or to soothe that actually doesn’t satisfy and only intensifies the rage. So yeah, I mean, even just thinking about myself when we come to, we just made it through the Christmas season, and that’s always a season that I have to really be very sensitive to the ways in which my shopping addiction, like that sense of if I have the power to purchase something, it gives me some dopamine, but it also doesn’t actually bring the kind of soothing and restoration I’m most hoping for. It can be really fun. So that’s something that feels more connected to.
Dan: It’s just such a brilliant part of capitalist structures. Create desire, often called mimetic desire. You see, other people have a lovely vacation at Vail. Oh, I don’t even ski, but I want to go to Vail. So all of a sudden you begin to have desire that seems like it can be satiated through a process and so consumption, but there’s another side of addiction. And Becky was during part of the time that we had family visiting, and I was a bit exhausted, and she at one point said, I think you’ve been on Instagram reels for about 30, 40 minutes. Is there anything that you might want to share? I’m like, don’t you interrupt me.
Rachael: Yeah. Oh yeah.
Dan: I don’t even remember what I just saw 30 seconds ago. And she knew that. I mean, it was a brilliant question that was there to disrupt me. And I’m like, I don’t even remember what was there. So I want to share something about a reel. The whole point of being on reels is that it is a nonchemical way of raising dopamine, creating this blindness to reality. And so yeah, that has become, for me, one of the signals that I’m struggling with hope. That I’m not willing at the moment to actually bear… and I want to go back to a word you used earlier in the podcast, and that’s the word grit. I think if you had one summary word to the nature of hope, it’s the word grit. So as I’m whiling away more than minutes over something that absolutely won’t matter to anyone ever at any time, even to me 30 seconds later. So consumption or distraction, I think are two words that we can use as a window to look at. Are we actually functioning with hope? At one point when we referred to the family as the Californians, and they do live in California, and then at one point my granddaughter, grace looked at me and she goes, why is such a pouty face?
Rachael: I love kids.
Dan: And again, I’m caught. I’m like, am I pouting? She goes, you have a pouty face. I don’t know if you’re pouting, but you have a pouty face. So glowering kind of like, I’m just negative. Things are not good. Life is not good. Politics are not good. Nothing’s good. And it’s kind of the Eeyore syndrome at that point where again, I’m not asking humanity to walk around with a smile because everything’s good, but where there is a way of alerting the world around you, I will make you pay if you come into my space because there is nothing good within me and nothing good within you or nothing good outside of us. I think that is a relational stance where you go when you’re in the presence of someone hopeless. And again, I want to distinguish this. When you’re struggling with depression, we’re talking about a biological phenomena to say to a person who’s depressed, well, just put a smile on your face. I want to scream.
Rachael: That’s right.
Dan: But my granddaughter was naming that I was in a funk. And in that I do think there was absorption, distraction, consumption. But in some ways I was emanating a certain energy to the world around, at least to this eight and a half year old that was able to read it well enough to be able to say, I’m not sure I want to be with you, but I’m going to sort of test to see whether or not you have the ability to own your face and then engage. And she said, what’s wrong? And I’m like, Papa’s kind of sad about some friends who are not physically doing well. Just the kindness of the question began to lift something of my glowering presence. But I think the deepest level is that sense of despair that you refuse to risk anymore when the reality of everything seems somewhat pointless. That’s where, again, there is something that hates hope. It isn’t that you have lost hope. I think it’s more accurate to say there is something that you hate about having to bear desire with some degree of innocence that has felt so rawly, deeply harmed that to give yourself even a small step toward hope. I go back to your very important phrase, you feel like a fool. And that vow of, I’m not going to do that again. Well, if we’ve described, I mean our listeners know we don’t give quick answers, but when you think about the redemptive process, what core nutrients have to be there to be able to see hope grow?
Rachael: Well, this has been true for me, and I think’s very true in the work I do with people through the Allender Center and in other context as in pastoral work. But that capacity, and it is a growing capacity, and it’s rarely something you can do in isolation, but just that capacity to bless innocent desire and really to bless innocence and not without entering suffering. And that’s why it’s a labor. It’s nutrients. As someone who loves to garden, there’s a tending. There’s a tending. So thinking about, and this is ongoing work, it’s not like, okay, it’s going to bless my innocence and my desire, and we’re off and running. I can say, this is something I have to come back to again and again and again. And having a toddler is definitely helping me. Getting to see her in that place of just raw, innocent, unbridled desire, whether that desire is actually linked to the restoration of all things or I want Cheetos, we’re just very much in the phase of, I want, and that’s how she says it, I want Cheetos, I want mama, whatever it is. But there’s such an innocence to it, and there’s a goodness to her, longing for nurturing and play and connection. And I don’t need her to be street smart right now. I feel protective of her. So how do we know there are parts of us we need that are really good, even if we feel like they constantly get us in trouble or lead us into deeper suffering? Or maybe the world says, you’re a fool. You’re ridiculous. That’s just how many times I’ve heard about, well, that’s just not how the world works. That’s like, because that’s not how the world works we’re just going with it?
Dan: Yeah. What’s in the political realm called real politics, meaning, yep, we have to kill. Yes, we have to deceive. Yes, we have to violate. And again, I’m not trying to address that realm with naivete, but to honor that, to dream redemption means you’re going to live with a reality of ongoing heartache and struggle, which is the very opposite of what most people think hope brings. Hope brings that, oh, it’s good, it’s going to get better. And the reality of, oh, no, it’s likely going to get worse. But in the face of it getting worse, will I bless my desire that there would be honor, that there would be dignity, that there would be care and curiosity, even between two people who radically differ over whatever they’re in some degree of antagonism about. So the sense of, well, every time you pray the Lord’s prayer do not feel the ache at many levels, but particularly with that phrase on earth as it’s in heaven. So I think that reality of I will not, and that’s grit, that’s defiance. I will not let my heart be bound to despair. And I feel it, and I cannot get rid of it, and it lurks and leaks within me. I will not let my heart be taken. And I think of it more like I’ve had a few moments where I have thought I was going to drown, and that image of I will fight as best I can back to the surface. So that framing of we need air, we need oxygen and the grit to come back up. And there may be as a fly fisher person, you know, that there are times where if a current takes you under, the last thing you should do is to fight your way back up. You got to let it spit you out at some point. People have unfortunately tragically drowned because they’ve done what made sense. They’ve tried to swim back to shore when the current’s taking them out. And the idea of the counterintuitive, oh, go further out. No, no, no, don’t fight back to the shore. Find a place where you can swim sideways to the shore and eventually you’ll find ground. But that’s the nature of hope is it’s so counterintuitive. It doesn’t make sense. It feels foolish. So I love that phrase, a blessing, innocent desire. But to me as well, and this is one of the things I love about my wife, many things I love about my wife, but her sense of being captured by the world around her and her openness to wonder, there is the privilege of being, as much as I love being with my grandchildren, I have the privilege of being with a very mature adult child, my wife who’s captured by wonder, and she sees things, people, interactions like, did you see that? And I’m like, no. Well, look and to be captured then by something of the surprising presence of just even the smallest taste of what will one day be is enough to be able to reenter into what is and begin to imagine, well, what needs to happen to move me or our world or a situation closer to what is meant to be? Any other directions that you find important to, should we say grow and hope?
Rachael: Yeah. One thing I would add is, and what’s got me thinking about this? Well, a lot of things I’m thinking about lament as something I actually see as a nutrient that helps me grow hope. Feels counterintuitive, similar to not swimming to the shore. It makes me think about James Baldwin when he said, I never have been in despair about the world. Enraged. I’ve been enraged by the world, but never despair. I cannot afford despair. You can’t tell the children that there is no hope. And just thinking about that interplay of despair and being enraged, and I think sometimes we think about lament and we think mostly about the grief side of lament. But I think in the moments, and I have to be careful, I can move in anger in a way that actually is more of that kind of glowering or demand. But there are places where what actually grows hope for me is allowing my heart to growl in the kind of, this is not what we’re meant for. This is not right. This is not okay. And for me very closely to that often is kind of not just sadness, that’s despair, but a grief that feels, again, back to laboring pains, like waves of compassion that just roil through your body and will often lean me to a kind of groaning, weeping, crying. But there’s something about giving voice to all that aches, I guess giving voice to the ache that actually does make space for me to grow hope.
Dan: Yes, it’s an emptying. And to me, that sense of lament is an emptying of all that I might hold that justifies shutting down, justifies giving up, justifies being cynical. But in that lament, we know it’s grief. But what you’ve articulated is through the brilliance of James Baldwin, that there is a rage in the Psalms. If you look at Psalm 44, if you look at Psalm 88, even the Psalm often used with regard to pro-life, Psalm 139, it’s a Psalm of complaint that takes on God for not stopping the injustice and the violation of the righteous. So when we begin to understand that when our bodies need hope, there is something of the intersection, again, of grief and anger that raises desire, but also if they’re held together. And I think that’s such an important phrase, if they’re held together, because grief without anger, from my standpoint, virtually always leads to something self absorptive and demanding. And then anger without grief almost always perpetuates the same harm that you are fighting against in terms of the injustice. So the ability to hold, the willingness to attempt to hold both together, I think is what allows us to escape this intersection between indifference on one side and mere violence on the other. And I think to me, the most important thing I know with regard to hope is I don’t have to grow it. Hope is something, if we can use the metaphor, once one is with child, there are things you need to do to keep your body and the process growing, but you don’t have to make fingernails at nine weeks. You don’t have to, in one sense, create hope within you. You have to nurture it, tend to it, allow it to grow. And I think there’s so often what we both have articulated that hope is so demanding and life-giving, yet terrifying and yet agonizing, that it’s easier to, in one sense, live with a counterfeit or a modicum versus to actually be a person of hope. Thoughts before we end?
Rachael: No, this is a good reminder for me. It’s a kind of good place to check in. And even just, I think my thoughts are for those of us listening to this conversation, that it’s okay to take stock and even locate where you are without a demand, that you’d be somewhere that you’re not. Just knowing that, yeah, there is a way forward. And I’ve just heard a lot of people, mostly people who have been in this game of life longer than me, use language like hope is also a discipline in some ways. And I just think, yeah, what does it mean to make space for it, even at times when we’re not fond of it? And then back to that sense of, and where do we need to lean into community? Where do we actually need to see a collective expression of hope as a way to grow hope? Yeah.
Dan: Amen. Well, I look forward to how we both see hope grow within us and you, our listeners, as we engage what we all know to be a very unique and complex year ahead.