Biography
Sr. Joan Chittister, O.S.B., is a member of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania. She's an internationally renowned speaker and a regular contributor to the National Catholic Reporter. Joan is the author of a new book called Scarred by Struggle; Transformed by Hope. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date.]

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"The Spirituality of Hope"
It's hard to imagine a bleaker place on Earth than Bosnia in 1992. Christians, Orthodox and Muslims battled for political control. Ethnic cleansing flourished. Neighbors forced neighbors from family homesteads generations old. The fighting was hand to hand. It was a bloody, hopeless time.

Vedran Smailovic was a Bosnian. Born in Sarajevo to a highly musical family. By the age of 37 Vedran himself had become the principal cellist of the prestigious Sarajevo opera theater. But the opera theater lay destroyed now, the economy shattered. National unity disintegrated.

The very definition of ‘human' was now in question. Years later, Smailovic described the city in those days as "The Capital of Hell." Then, at 4:00 pm on May 27th, 1992, a long line of starving people waiting in front of the only bakery in Sarajevo that still had enough flour to make bread were shelled. Twenty-two people died as Vedran Smailovic stood at his window a hundred yards away and watched.

The next day hungry people lined up again to beg for bread—certain they would die if they didn't come to the bakery and convinced they could die if they did. Then it happened. Vedran Smailovic arrived. He was dressed in the black suit and white tie in which he had played every night until the opera theater was destroyed. He was carrying his cello and a chair.

Smailovic sat down in the square and, surrounded by debris and the remainders of death and the despair of the living, he began to play the mournful Albinoni "Adagio," the one music manuscript that had been found whole in the city after the carpet bombing of Dresden.

What's more, shelling or no, he came back to the square every day after that for 21 consecutive days to do the same thing, a living reminder that there is a strength in the human spirit that simply cannot be destroyed. Today, where he sat, there is a monument of a man in a chair playing a cello. But the monument is not to his music, as good as it is. It is to his refusal to surrender the hope that beauty could be reborn in the midst of a living hell. Even more important, perhaps, is the fact that that small sound of hope rings on still around the world.

Smailovic was called to play the "Adagio" in Seattle, in Washington, D.C. during the inaugural celebration of President Clinton, in New York City, at the Statue of Liberty and, in 1998, in Belfast prior to the signing of the peace accord in Northern Ireland. Finally, Yo-Yo Ma played David Wilde's "The Cellist of Sarajevo" in Manchester, England, in 1994 with Smailovic in attendance. Clearly, hope is a spark that once struck will simply not be extinguished.

I know out of my own experience that there is no such thing as life without struggle. I have met it, indeed, from one end of life to another. Over and over again, the foundations of life have shifted and slid away from me, sometimes only changing the mental landscape a little, at other times shattering every given I've ever assumed into a kaleidoscope of pain. I have come, like you, through the death of loved ones, debilitating illness, life-shaping disappointment and public rejection by the very institutions and people that have meant the most to me.

When tragedy strikes, when trouble comes, when life disappoints us—as it surely will—we stand at the crossroads between hope and despair. To go the way of despair colors the way we look at things, makes us suspicious of the future, makes us negative about the present. It leads us to ignore the very possibilities that could save us, or worse, leads us to want to hurt as we have been hurt ourselves. When I say that I am in despair, I am really saying that I have given up on God. Despair says that I am God and if I can't do anything about this situation, then nothing and nobody can.

To go the way of hope, on the other hand, takes life on its own terms, knows that whatever happens God lives in it, and expects that, whatever its twists and turns, it will ultimately yield its good to those who live it consciously, to those who live it to the hilt.

Hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside of us to get better. It is about getting better inside about what is going on outside. It is about becoming open to the God of Newness. It is about allowing ourselves to let go of the present, to believe in the future we cannot see but trust to God. Surrendering to the demands of the moment, holding on when holding on seems pointless, brings us to that point of personal transformation which is the juncture of maturity and sagacity. Then, whatever the circumstances, however hard the task, the struggles of life may indeed shunt us from mountain top to mountain top but they will not destroy us.

Life is not one road. It is many roads, the walking of which provides the raw material out of which we become hope in the midst of despair. Every dimension of the process of struggle is a call to draw from a well of new understandings. It is in those that hope dwells. It is that wisdom that carries us beyond the dark night of struggle to the dawn of new wisdom and new strength.

We always think of hope as grounded in the future. That's wrong, I think. Hope is fulfilled in the future but it depends on our ability to remember that, like Vendran Smailovic, we have survived everything in life to this point—and in even better form than we were when those troubles began. So why not this latest situation, too? Then we hope because we have no reason not to hope. Hope is what sits by a window and waits for one more dawn, despite the fact that there isn't an ounce of proof in tonight's black, black sky that it can possibly come.

An ancient people tell the story of the elder who was talking about struggle. The elder said, "I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one." And the disciples asked, "But which wolf will win the fight in your heart?" And the holy one answered, "It depends on which one I feed."

The spiritual task of life is to feed hope. Hope is not something to be found outside of us. It lies in the spiritual life we cultivate within. The whole purpose of wrestling with life is to be transformed into the self we are meant to become, to step out of the confines of our false securities and allow our creating God to go on creating. In us.

Jack Reimer, Houston Chronicle, February 17, 2001. Reprinted in Chicken Soup for the Soul and cited at http://www.stlukes-hou.org?Sermons/JM022501.htm, viewed June 13, 2002.

Interview with Joan Chittister
Interviewed by Floyd Brown

Floyd Brown: Sr. Joan, the Psalms tell us, "Happy are those who hope in the Lord." What is the link between happiness and hope?

Joan Chittister: The question is, Floyd, what you mean by happiness, not what you mean by hope. We have people in dire circumstances, things that would not make most of us happy. There are marvelous stories of the missionaries, for instance, who began the missions among the lepers. That wouldn't go over as happiness on American television, but it does for people who have hope in the fulfilment of the spirit. We have people working in our prisons in the United States today, working on death row. Is that "happy" in a Madison Avenue model? Of course not. But if by hope you mean the fulfilment of the human spirit, the coming to be everything you can be, the allowing of the moment to bring out the new you, the best you, the fulfilled you, then hope and happiness are the same thing. I am happy in what I am hoping for because what I'm hoping for is what my creating God means me to be, here and now at this time.

Brown: That's a wonderful analogy. Let me read one other passage from the Bible and let you respond to that if you will. In Romans it says, "Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope." How does hope come out of suffering?

Chittister: Floyd, that's the reason I wrote this latest book. The fact of the matter was that people were asking me to write a book about hope and I tried. For two and one-half years I worked on the concept of hope, coming back to the point that I believe every Christian, every major religious revelation and tradition comes to, that hope lies in the mind of God for us and the will of God for our development. I got up one morning and I said to myself, "This is ridiculous! I can't write a book on hope." Why not? Because there is nobody in the United States getting up in the morning saying, "I feel wonderful today! I'm full of hope. I think I'll go out and buy a book and see why I feel that way." That's nonsense! I came to understand that you can't write about hope without writing about struggle. That struggle is the seed bed of hope. We allow ourselves to think that hope is a hedge against struggle and pain. That's not true. Hope is what comes out of our ongoing creativity at the times of our deepest struggle. The Scripture tells us quite clearly that one leads to the other. The Scriptures just simply say the same thing: if this, then this, then this. Now you have reason to hope because you're more full of the sense of life at the end of struggle. You're more full of the presence of God in yourself at the end of struggle than you can ever possibly be before it. There isn't anybody who struggles in life who doesn't find that out.

Brown: Someone once said, "If it doesn't kill me, it will make me stronger."

Chittister: And there is a lot of truth to that!

Brown: I'd like a personal story from you. You have so much strength of character. We all recognize that in the great work that you are doing and admire so much. But you're human, too. Have you ever had an experience where your hope was challenged?

Chittister: When I got into writing the book, I found myself using the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel as the cycle of struggle and the model of hope. It's God's teaching to us about what struggle is, how we go through it and what the other end is. So I said to myself, "Well, if you are so right, prove it! It ought to apply to you, Joan." I sat down and I wrote on a yellow pad a couple of the great struggles of my life and said, "Is this true?" One of them, of course which a lot of people already know, was physical. I was a polio survivor and didn't walk for four years. But beyond the physical, which many people go through, I went through a life-changing event. I was told one day that I would go to a creative writing class and the next day I wasn't permitted. I saw my whole life change in front of me and, yet, I knew in every step of the way that I was becoming more the person that I needed to become. Yes, I've been there, way there!

Brown: And the hope came through.

Chittister: The hope came through!

Brown: It's such a joy to be with you and it's our real privilege to have you. Thank you, Sr. Joan.

Chittister: Thank you, Floyd.