Hope in the age of wildfire

After one week evacuated from our home in Summerland, an exodus forced by the Bald Creek wildfire, one of the worst in the history of British Columbia,  we join another 20,000 home and business owners hoping for an imminent and safe return to our homes and our little Town. A very small section of Summerland is now open for conditional return with the promise of more widespread access in the near future.

For many, it has been a hard wait. The shock of disruption to the routines of daily lives has now evolved into a sense of potential or actual loss of homes, those places which provide comfort, stability, and safety for us. We hope to return to our homes finding only minimal damage. We hope to return to the community which has blessed us in so many ways. We know that some things will be the same; some will bear little resemblance to what we left behind. Farms, orchards, and landscapes will take years to recover. We know of only one death though other health maladies are expected given the huge amount of smoke and stress affecting everyone.

“Hope” is the emotion of our day. While hope can imply a specific operational outcome it is really more of a feeling. Rebecca Solnit writes: “Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth’s treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal.” Hope is dynamic. It motivates rather than informs. It encourages us despite the odds and logical outcomes. Paul, in Romans 4:18-22 cites Abraham as his own inspiration:

“Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why ‘it was credited to him as righteousness.’

Canadian, Catholic theologian Ron Rolheiser continues the theme: “Genuine hope is never to be confused with either wishful thinking or temperamental optimism. Unlike hope, wishful thinking isn’t based on anything. It’s pure wishing. Optimism, for its part, takes its root either in a natural temperament (“I always see the bright side of things”) or on how good or bad the evening news looks on a given day. And we know how that can change from day to day. Hope has a different basis.”

Singer songwriter Jaylene Johnson won a 2011 national competition for her song “Hope.” An Anglican church of Canada webpage explains: “When Jaylene Johnson talks about hope, she isn’t offering up platitudes. The Winnipeg singer-songwriter has been through many ups and downs, including a traumatic car accident in 2004 that left her with what she calls ‘brutal, daily chronic pain.’ This depth shines through in her song Hope.”

“I think hope is mysterious or maybe not so mysterious when we walk with God,” she said in an interview. Her song lyrics describe a hope that’s deep and enduring, beyond cheap gestures of ‘pulling petals off’ or ‘fingers crossed.’”

She riffs on a phrase from art critic and novelist, John Berger who writes: “Hope is not a form of guarantee; it’s a form of energy, and very frequently that energy is strongest in circumstances that are very dark.” A portion of her lyric reads:

Hope is not a warrantee
It isn’t buy one get one free
No lifetime guarantee that everything works out
Hope is not our fingers crossed
It isn’t pulling petals off
He loves me or he loves me not
That isn’t hope
That isn’t hope

Hope is a boat that holds you when you’re too far from the shore
Hope’s a little bird that flies on in the middle of a storm
It’s the song inside a heart that won’t give up – Hope
–©2011 Jaylene Johnson and James Kimball

Indeed, hope has seemed so distant for so many around Summerland this past week. Circumstances have been tragic in so many locations throughout BC, elsewhere in Canada, in the United States, and throughout Western Europe. Ours is the age of wildfire; and as John Vaillant says, we now watch for “Fire Weather.”

Some take comfort from religious faith – the generosity of the Penticton Sikh Community is profoundly influential and beneficial. Others place their hope in technology and the very best efforts of the BC Wildfire Service; and rightly so. We all need to find hope where we can find it. Otherwise we succumb to despair. Hope will point us in the right direction. Hope will help us build necessary resilience. Hope will be our companion on this particular journey.

A video of Hope can be viewed here.

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