wfn.org | Hope comes with potential dangers

[Beth Hawn]

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To:  'Worldwide Faith News'
Date: 1999-04-07 14:29
Priority: 3
Message ID: 8E2128DEF480BE11810A7611E65C8882
Conversation ID: First Person: Hope comes with potential dangers

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April 7, 1999
Mennonite Board of Missions
Beth Hawn
(219) 294-7523
<NEWS@MBM.org>

First Person: Hope comes with potential dangers

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (GCMC/MBM) - I never met Sadie, but I often   
hear
our next-door neighbor, Margaret, talking about her.  For years Margaret   
and
Sadie lived together.  Sadie was a frail, small lady with a bent back,   
and was
wheelchair-bound.  She had never married, had no family, and there was no   
one
to care for her in her old age.  Margaret first started caring for Sadie   
by bringing
her soup every day.

Eventually Margaret moved in with Sadie to care for her every need.   
 Sadie made
Margaret laugh.  They became best friends.

Years passed, and Margaret thought she knew everything there was to know
about Sadie.  But one day Sadie revealed a secret hurt Margaret had never   

suspected.

It happened when Sadie was in her 80s and her health was beginning to   
fail.

One day she sent Margaret upstairs to fetch a big white box from her   
wardrobe.
 "Throw it away," Sadie said.  "I don't need it anymore."

Curious, Margaret opened the box.  Inside lay a beautiful wedding dress,
looking as fresh as the day it was bought.  The receipt, now faded, lay   
on top.

As Margaret unfolded the delicate silk and lace, Sadie unfolded the   
fragile fabric
of her own faded hopes - hopes that she had kept boxed up, secret, in a   
private
corner of her soul all these years.

Like many eldest daughters of her generation, Sadie as a young woman had   
cared
for her aging parents while her brothers and younger sister all married   
and
began lives of their own.  Year after year she performed her duty   
faithfully,
each year another sacrifice of her own dreams, her own life.  She never
married.  She never had children.

Yet Sadie clung to a secret hope that had sustained her through the years   
of
drudgery and loneliness.

As she watched the passing years erode her eligibility for marriage,   
Sadie
secretly purchased a wedding dress and hid it away in her wardrobe.

Now, as death approached, she finally could let go of her secret hope.

She told her friend,  "I always hoped a man would one day call for me,   
but
he never did."

Sadie's story reminds me that hope is a potentially dangerous thing.  It   
can
sustain us; it can give our lives meaning; it can be a buffer against   
despair.
But it can also break our hearts if our deepest desires are never met.

In a profound sense, life in Northern Ireland feels like that.  People   
hope for
peace.  Yet they are also afraid to hope, because so often their hopes   
have
been dashed to pieces.

I see this incredible struggle to hope all around me every day.  It   
amazes me.

The past several weeks have tested Northern Ireland's will to continue
hoping in the peace process.

The ongoing struggles over arms decommissioning have battered many
peoples' hopes. That struggle is often expressed in cynicism toward David   

Trimble, head of the Unionist party in Northern Ireland and present   
recipient
of the Nobel Peace prize.  Comments about the prematurity of his prize
abound as he locks horns with Sinn Fein.

The recent car bomb that killed a lawyer, and the shooting that followed   
in the
Shankhill that killed a Protestant, has equally damaged peoples' hope for   
peace.

The Protestant killed the other week was not in retaliation from the   
Catholic
community for the car bomb that killed the woman in Portadown.  It was   
carried
out by paramilitaries from within the Protestant community to punish the   
rogue
paramilitaries for planting the bomb.

But as I write of these terrible things, I have hope that sustains me.

Outside I hear the soft clatter of bottles, signaling that the milkman is   
at our
door. I love living in a country where there are still milkmen. I love   
having a
resh bottle of milk delivered every morning. No matter how grotesque The
Troubles become, no matter how bad the gun battles at night on the   
streets,
at first light people still hear that familiar gentle clink of the milk   
bottles.
 Somehow, the milkman's simple act of assuring that milk is at the front   
door
every morning sustains many people's hopes.  Northern Ireland owes a debt   

of gratitude to its milkmen.

And so it was with Sadie.  "I don't need that old dress anymore since I   
have a
friend like you," she told Margaret through her tears.

Sadie died not long after that.  There weren't many people at the   
funeral.  The
minister didn't say much.  And because Sadie didn't have her own grave,
Margaret's family plot was opened, and Sadie's coffin was lowered to rest   

on top of the coffin where Margaret's husband was buried.

Someday Margaret's coffin will rest on top of Sadie's.  Three coffins   
sharing
the intimacy of one grave.

Whenever I see Margaret taking soup to an elderly man on the street, I am   

reminded of our enduring desire to hope and to truly live.  I am reminded   
that
if we can hold onto that hope,  we just might catch a glimpse of the   
resurrection
where all our hopes will be realized.

        Once I stood in the night with my head bowed low.
        And the darkness as black as the sea,
        And my heart was afraid,
        And I cried, "Oh, Lord, don't hide your face from me.
        Hold my hand all the way, every hour, every day,
        From here to the great unknown.
        Take my hand, help me stand where no one stands alone!

        Like a king I may live in a palace so cold
        With great riches to call my own,
        But I don't know a thing in this whole wide world
        That's worse than being alone.
        Hold my hand all the way, every hour, every day,
        From here to the great unknown.
        Take my hand, help me stand where no one stands alone!
("Where no one stands alone."  From Alison Krauss and the Cox Family.
I KNOW WHO HOLDS MY HAND.  Rounder Records.)
* * *

David Moser, who is jointly appointed by Mennonite Board of Missions
(Mennonite Church) and the Commission on Overseas Mission (General
Conference Mennonite Church) works with the Belfast Central Mission of
the Springfield Road Methodist Church in West Belfast.  He serves on the
pastoral team and is helping to develop a community and reconciliation   
center.