Talking about hope

After a delicious meal and great conversation on Monday Sept. 8, Jack called us to attention, and Wendy led us in a discussion about “hope” as the theme for the upcoming exhibit, 8 Minutes Max, and writing venue.

First we split into groups of about 6 to 8 to talk about any or all of the questions she gave us:

   

1.

Define hope in your own words.

   

2. What verse, quote, lesson, or inspiration about hope is forefront in your mind?

   

3. What are planning on doing for your hope project?

   

4. How’s the project progressing?

   

5. If you are not doing a project, try to help others in your group with theirs.

   

6. What kind of tangents has the sermon series on hope, this project, or this discussion opened up for you in relation to your art?

   

7. What kind of artwork (not related to the hope project) are you working on currently?

After talking in our groups for about 45 minutes, we all sat in a circle and shared some of the thoughts that came out of the discussions.

A definition: Hope is the ability to keep on going and to bounce back from difficulties. We need hope to fight the enemy of our souls.

Several verses were cited:

   

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“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” (Proverbs 13:12)

   

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“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” (Hebrews 6:19)

   

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“…let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.” (1 Thess. 5:8)

   

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One person brought up this connection between faith and hope: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

   

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Another pointed out that the root of the Spanish word for hope, esperanza, is esperar, to wait, and offered this: “I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’” (Lamentations 3:19-24)

Thence ensued a flow of imagining what hope looks like. A heart entwined around an anchor. The arteries and veins of the heart shaped as anchor-like. The heart as a floating thing drifting away on the breeze until anchored.

The necessity of connection with others emerged as an essential part of having hope. And then the idea of collaboration came up as motivating and a bearer of hope as well as providing momentum and way for each artist to hold ideas and things less tightly. One idea for a collaborative project was for visual artists to partially finish pieces, hang them, then take them down and have different artists finish them.

We ended with prayer and left with full hearts. This blog entry is only one person’s puny remembrances; each person no doubt took home their own bits of hope from the collaboration of the evening.

As Jack said the next day: "

God graced us last night with excitement, creative explosions of ideas, transparently wrestling with the meaning of Hope in deep places of hurt and pain, people willing to humbly reveal those things."

by Kate Van Dyke