I recently ran across this quote by Aldo Leopold, from his book, “A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There:” “One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring.
“A cardinal, whistling spring to a thaw but later finding himself mistaken, can retrieve his error by resuming his winter silence. A chipmunk, emerging for a sunbath but finding a blizzard, has only to go back to bed. But a migrating goose, staking two hundred miles of black night on the chance of finding a hole in the lake, has no easy chance for retreat. His arrival carries the conviction of a prophet who has burned his bridges…”
I thought about this quote the other day as I heard the mournful honk from above and glanced skyward into the blisteringly bright sun to watch the V-shaped formation make its way north. It lightened my heart, and not my heart alone. I noticed several people stopping on the street and gazing upwards as well.
And I thought about this quote later in the week when, in the midst of a conversation about the future of the Church, someone said I was an optimist. For some strange reason, I did not take the comment well. For me, an optimist is someone who denies the obvious, or chooses not to see it.
But neither do I see myself as a pessimist, as someone who sees nothing but the darkness and the problems. They seem to be lost in an endless cycle of bitterness and apathy.
I like to think of myself as someone with hope.
For me, a person with hope is keenly aware of the darkness, the problems, the struggles and has confidence in the future. Hope is born from a belief in a power greater than the darkness and struggles.
We live in an age of the Church when the virtue and gift of hope is needed more than ever. And yet, just at the time we need it, it does seem to be in short supply. Instead of heeding the words of St. Paul to “encourage one another,” we seem to bring one another division and acrimony instead.
Priests, who stand together as brothers in the heart of the Church, find our trust in one another lacking. We challenge and question each other’s motives and we sometimes presume a lack of loyalty to the Church based on the narrowest of reasons. We have allowed the partisanship of our politics to enter into the life of the Church, presuming the labels “liberal” or “conservative” mean something in the context of Christian community.
Religious orders are struggling, vocations are down, parishes are closing, the connection to the community of faith appears to be waning in the lives of many. We wonder if there will be a church building in the future for our funeral, will there be a priest to celebrate the Mass, will there be ladies to serve the luncheon.
In addition, the scandals of the past years have brought about a malaise of cynicism.
All right, maybe it is goofy for me to have hope. But I want to be goofy like a goose.
We live our Christian lives, not as cardinals or chipmunks, but with the faith of geese. We fly into a future, not entirely certain of what we may find but with the “conviction of a prophet,” knowing that springtime, while beyond our control, is assured.
Our hope is born of the fact that, even if everything around us is falling apart, Jesus still stands in our midst. Our faith does not rest in buildings, or institutions, or traditions; our faith cannot be found on an ideological spectrum. Our faith is in the abiding presence of Jesus. He is the singular reason for our lives.
Hope is born in the undying belief that God, who raised Jesus from the dead, can also bring life and springtime renewal to his people. We begin to realize, slowly and painfully, what really matters in our lives. When the peripherals being to fail us, we know there is still a beating heart at the center. The name of that heart is Jesus.
Hope is born in the undying belief that we can learn again how to be priest-brothers to one another and servants of the people of God. We all learn that a community will survive only when all of us share the empowerment we have received in baptism. We all learn that our faith must be lived outward in the proclamation and living of the Kingdom, and not inward, staring at the struggles.
We can walk out of our services for Holy Week, the undying celebration of God’s love, with the faith of geese and the “conviction of a prophet.” We live, knowing the darkness we face but united in the hope that, because of Easter, it is still a great time to be the Church.