Pessimist? Optimist? Hopeful!

 

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, 19th C Priest and Poet 

Would you describe yourself as a climate pessimist or a climate optimist? Not too long ago journalist Chris Turner, author of How to Be a Climate Optimist was in the guest chair for a CBC Radio phone-in show asking whether listeners were climate optimists or pessimists. I would say that most callers were a mixture, although a couple seemd to feel Turner had been smoking the wacky tabacky.  I thought he did a good job of identifying areas of improvement in a variety of spheres in recent years and I was impressed enough to put the book on hold at the library.

There are days when I'm a raging pessimist because so many people seem oblivous to what is unfolding around us. Then there are the politicians who waffle about addressing the climate emergency, happier to declare one rather than actually act in decisive ways. This week the sky turned orange and the air was unbreathable and there were Canadian politicians who didn't give a damn or blamed it all on arsonists. There are plenty of deniers out there but far more ditherers and it is the dithering that is deadly. It can sound as though we are addressing the challenge when all we're doing is creating our own form of verbal greenhouse gas. 

                                              Bay of Quinte, early morning -- Ruth Mundy photographer

I was an optimist this morning as Ruth and I paddled out into the Bay of Quinte from Big Island, Prince Edward County, or perhaps I was hopeful.  We were alone with the expanse of water and sky, surrounded by critters. On the drive there I commented that we hadn't seen otters this year and within a few minutes of launching we saw a family of four. We were delighted by the blue herons and ospreys and snapping turtles. We paddled through a grove of wild rice (manoomin) which has expanded through the years and past huge cottonwood trees on Grape Island.  Once again we were reminded of the years-long efforts to remediate the heavily polluted bay.

                                         Bay of Quinte, wild rice and swan feather -- Ruth Mundy photo

I like that climate scientist and Christian, Katharine Hayhoe called her book Saving Us with a subtitle about hope and healing. Optimism and hope share characteristics, to be sure, but there is literally no optimism in the bible, only hope. What's the difference? In an Atlantic magazine article during the pandemic, a particularly grim time,  Arthur Brooks offered: 

People tend to use hope and optimism as synonyms, but that isn’t accurate. In one 2004 paper in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, two psychologists used survey data to parse the two concepts. They determined that “hope focuses more directly on the personal attainment of specific goals, whereas optimism focuses more broadly on the expected quality of future outcomes in general.” In other words, optimism is the belief that things will turn out all right; hope makes no such assumption but is a conviction that one can act to make things better in some way.https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/09/hope-optimism-happiness/620164/

                                                 Snapping Turtle, on the move -- Ruth Mundy photo

I'm willing to blur the lines between optimism and hope in an attempt to live each day with a sense of purpose,practicality, and  promise. I'm fairly sure there are no blueprints for a better world but there is a wildly imaginative Creator who loves this world. 

We picked up grandchildren for a sleepover and I realize I have no right to be a pessimist if I love them as much as I feel I do. I will be an optimist and hopeful, God be my helper.