David's Desk is my opportunity to share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey. These letters are my personal insights and opinions and do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you wish to share this letter with others, please feel free to do so; however, the material is ©2019 by David Spangler. If you no longer wish to receive these letters, please let us know at info@Lorian.org.
In December, 2013, the topic of my David’s Desk was “The Knight of Fiery Hope.” I 'd had a visionary experience that I wanted to share with my readers. It had been about a particular kind of hope, and I felt then that a message of hope was needed. Now, with the world struggling with a global pandemic and crippled economies, with authoritarianism and political oppression on the rise, with the challenge of racial injustice, with the increasing impacts of climate change, and, to top it off in the United States, with the most divisive and vitriolic election campaign this country has seen in a very long time, it seemed to me we could use a dose of hope. It seemed like a good time to revisit the Knight.
I have many newer readers that never saw that earlier essay, so I’m going to repeat parts of it here. For those of you whose memories go back seven years, not only do I take my hat off to you but I trust you’ll forgive the repetition. It can be good to be reminded of important things.
I began by describing the experience that prompted the essay:
“I was sitting on a sofa in my home reading when a non-physical being abruptly appeared in the air in front of me. While this in itself was not unusual for me, the appearance of this being was. He looked like a knight out of a storybook, clad in shining golden armor, its face hidden within its helmet. On its chest burned a flame, as bright and radiant as a piece of sunlight. It said clearly, “I am a Knight of Fiery Hope! I speak to all humans. You are not entering a darkened age. You are entering a time when the Light of your creative spirit can manifest new vision and new life. Be what I am. Let fiery hope, not despair or fear, shape your world.” Having delivered this message, this being then disappeared.
“As always when dealing with subtle beings, the felt sense behind an encounter or communication is at least as important, and sometimes more so, than the actual words that are used. The thought processes of such beings are invariably dense with interconnections and meanings, far more than can be accurately reproduced in a few lines of linear text. In this case, I was aware that what this being was saying had little to do with the future. He wasn’t saying, “Have hope for the future” or “Have hope because everything’s going to work out and your planetary problems will all be solved.” Rather he was describing a creative presence and potential within us—something “fiery” in the sense of being active and dynamic and something that holds open the door of possibility.
“This “fiery hope” is not about events but about ourselves, that we are a source of hope because we are—or can be—a source of change and new vision. A particular course of events may be inevitable, but our response to it is not. We can respond in ways we could not have predicted or that a simple description of the event would have predicted.”
After describing the experience of “Fiery Hope,” I wrote about examples of people triumphing over difficult circumstances due to never losing hope. Then I wrote the following statements: “Hope isn’t a wish; it’s an inner capacity to be open to possibilities for action and vision that refuse to be circumscribed or defined by circumstances and which thus can be transformative in the moment.”
And…“Hope can change the future by opening us to new possibilities and choices which can make a difference; but just as importantly, hope can change ourselves. It can change how we meet events that cannot in themselves be changed for one reason or another but which can be altered in their effects by how we respond, especially by how we work together and care for each other.”
I concluded that David’s Desk by writing, “The author of the utopian novel, Ecotopia, Ernest Callenbach, died in 2011, leaving behind a farewell letter. It discusses the many ecological challenges and other difficulties facing humanity. He then asks the question, “Although we may not be capable of changing history, how can we equip ourselves to survive it?” His answers include mutual support, teamwork, altruism, working on behalf of the common good, and the “enormously creative” power of collaborative thinking, all things I’ve discussed over the years in these essays. But the number one survival quality on his list is hope. Hope makes all the other things possible by opening us to them.”
Re-reading this, I feel what I had to say then is applicable to where we are now. It seems to me we are in danger of losing hope, of seeing hope as itself a hopeless emotion, a kind of wishful thinking that denies the reality of the world around us. And there’s no doubt that people can and do express a naïve hope that does ignore the pain and danger present in our world.
But hopelessness is like a crowded room in which we can’t move our arms but can only shuffle along in lockstep with wherever the press of the crowd pushes us. Fiery hope is like stepping into a clearer space where we have a chance to think of possibilities and the elbow room to act on them.
Watching the news, I do not lose my hope, but I do see hope under siege, attacked by the circumscribing, limiting energies of anger and fear, hatred and division. And there’s no question - there’s a lot to be fearful about in today’s world. There’s a lot to fear, a lot to be angry over.
But then I got an email from a friend in Canada who sent me an article written by Thomas Homer-Dixon, an environmental researcher and author, in which he describes a new book of his that has just been published called Commanding Hope: The Power We Have To Renew a World in Peril. In the article, these words stood out for me:
“Our capacity and need for hope, as long as we keep that hope honest, is a precious gift, because it encourages us to keep open a space for possibilities, and to use our imagination to create possibilities in that space. That hope thrives on mere possibility is not a weakness but its greatest strength.”
I can just see the Knight of Fiery Hope nodding his head and smiling.