Anthems of troubled light: five new definitions of hope for difficult days

How to be hopeful when the world seems stuck in a downward spiral

‘You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on.’
―Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable

‘What do we do when it feels like nothing can be done?’ Photo by Cherry Laithang.

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Poem: Where it all leads

The news chokes my heart.
The grief makes me sick.
     The sun rises, I discover
     a brand new shade of light.

Pain. Why always
so much pain? I am afraid.
     A piano, Debussy. No one can say
     why there should be anything gorgeous at all.

The planet is dying.
Our descendants will hate us.
     Two people meet for the first time.
     They will become lovers.

The sadness is a universe
being born inside my chest.
     Acorn falls to the ground. Oak whispers 
     three hundred years from now.

Heartbreak. Anxiety. 
Christ knows it will ever stop.
     The children are at play. Laughing.
     I cannot help but smile.

The wise do not try to explain suffering.
Just let us hurt, they say.
     It leaves me breathless to think
     that spring will come regardless.

All that loss. Hopes crushed.
Where does love lead us?
     The sun rises. Shout at the Earth
     but you won’t stop it from turning.

©Gideon Heugh, Naming God

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Prelude: stuck

What do we do?

You woke up this morning to a world that reeks of flesh-smoke, and sorrow, and spiralling hatred.

What do we do?

The walls seem to be narrowing, the avenues of escape closing. A perma-crisis; an ever-worsening.

What do we do?

The struggles are hauntingly, sickeningly familiar—the world’s, my own. Our demons are still in our possession. These words from St. Paul could be about humanity as a collective:

For what I want to do, I do not do; but what I hate, I do.
(Romans 7:15)

Are we stuck? Is this it? Do we simply shrug our weary shoulders before a world that seems a storm of pain and disappointment and just accept things as they are?

What do we do when it feels like nothing can be done?

If hope is a feeling

It is easy to despair. Forgivable to grow cynical in days like these. Hope seems ill-suited to a world in which hatred can win, in which violence is met by more violence, in which our bodies are filling with plastic and the rivers are choked with sewage and the air itself is becoming antagonistic and no one seems to care.

Hope is indeed ill-suited for that. At least, the thing that we think hope is ill-suited for it.

For we think that hope is a feeling—the sense that things are on the up, the bright swell of optimism, a positive outlook. Hope, in this context, depends upon circumstance: ‘Things look hopeful, therefore I will have hope.’ But that’s no good. If hope is just a feeling, if hope is merely what things seem they might become, then it is likely to abandon us when we need it most.

If hope is just a feeling, then it is likely to abandon us when we need it most.

Hope is needed at dusk, not dawn. Hope is not useful if it waits for the moment you catch sight of a rescue boat; it needs to be there when you are being swept out to sea.

We need new definitions and understandings of hope, ones that are not contingent upon our feelings, whose existence is not precluded by a soul in agony.

So, what do we do?

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1. Kinah: hope-as-lament

‘My soul is in deep anguish.
How long, Lord, how long?’
—Psalm 6:3

‘The Lord is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit.’
—Psalm 34:18

The first note is that sudden plunge—the realisation that something has gone horribly wrong. It is discordant, disorientating. It swells, joined by the harsh melodies of rage, sorrow, helplessness.

Kinah is a Hebrew word meaning ‘lamentation’. It refers to songs of grief—collective wailings unleashed in the face of devastation. It is a musical rending. It is an irrefusal to face the difficulty of it all.

How long, Lord, how long? When are we going to stop losing? Where is the breakthrough, the turnaround, the change in tide?

Hurl it at the sky

The second quote above, Psalm 34:18, is, unfortunately, often used as a kind of saccharine cure-all for those who are going through hard times. It is perhaps the religious equivalent of ‘Cheer up, things aren’t so bad.’ But that’s not what it says. It says there is such a thing as being brokenhearted; there is such a thing as being crushed in spirit. God does not prevent that from happening. What is says is that there is something about being in that devastated place that brings you into proximity with a weeping divine. When you sing a song of lament, you find that you are resonating with something potent and holy.

Hope begins with an acknowledgment of reality. Hiding from the bitter and tumultuous doesn’t help anyone. Nor does a kind of sunny optimism. Life can be tragic.

So let it out. The sadness. The disappointment. The grief. Name it, express it, hurl it at the sky, dig it into the earth. They are large enough to hold it.

We begin here. Because after the song is sung, in the haunting silence that follows, a fierce yet delicate thought may come.

We can sing of destruction because we have not been destroyed.

2. Teshuvah: hope-as-return

‘Return again, return again,
return to the land of your soul.’
—Liturgy from Mishkan Hanefesh: Machzor for the Days of Awe

‘“We'll find a place they haven't ruined yet."
"I'm already there. That place is in my head.”’
—From Andor, Season 1 Episode 7

I could quite happily write an essay purely about quotations from Andor. A series of essays, even. It has some of the best writing you will find on any television show ever, and contains themes that are vividly relevant—such as what it means to resist oppression in the face of overwhelming odds.

Here, the main character, Cassian, is trying to convince his mother, Maarva, to leave their home planet, which has been taken over by the evil galactic Empire. She refuses to go, because she has refused to give up. She says she is able to bear the oppression because she has found a place within herself that can never be oppressed.

The word teshuvah is usually translated from Hebrew as ‘repent’. And that’s not necessarily a helpful word, given the toxically religious connotations it can have. But teshuvah more literally means ‘return’. Return to what, exactly?

A subversive act

Whatever has happened to us, whatever has been done to us, whatever darkness we might be going through, there is something deep within us that remains luminous. It is the soul—the image of God in which we are made. It does not change, or fade, though it may get buried beneath layers of hard living.

There is a place within you that hasn’t been ruined, and never shall be. It is a place of curiosity, love, beauty, goodness. And we can return there, not as a naive escape, but as a subversive act in which we face the tragedy of it all and remember that we are alive and can love regardless.

Teshuvah declares there is part of us that, whatever shatterings may take place, is unconquerable. It is a place that we can go to and emerge from; a point of source from which we can become. It is a place of hope.

3. Metanoia: hope-as-choice

‘The gospel of light is the crossroads of — indolence, or action. Be ignited, or be gone.’
—Mary Oliver, What I have learned so far

Metanoia is another word, this time from New Testament Greek, that is translated as ‘repent’. In typically confusing biblical style, it actually means something quite different.

While teshuvah means a ‘return’, metanoia means to ‘change your mind’. This is not a passive change of heart, but rather a purposeful shift within our innermost being, a realignment of will and purpose. Metanoia is deep transformation, an intentional turning within that alters our trajectory.

Metanoia tells us that we can change because we can choose. With each decision, we either continue the way we have been going, or we pivot toward a different path. It is an invitation to move, even when the world around us might feel immovable. Repentance, far from being a woe-is-me- religious idea, is a declaration that change is possible.

Repairing the world

This is hope as commitment; hope as practice. We choose hope by choosing to act. The sun will rise tomorrow, and regardless of how haunted with troubles the air is, we can wake up and decide what to do with that day. We can choose to be kind, to reach out, to love. We can choose to persist in repair, however fragile or incomplete the work may seem.

Tikkun olam is the Jewish concept of repairing the world. This isn’t necessarily about grand gestures; it’s about everyday choices. To practice tikkun olam is to embrace the idea that the world is worth mending, and that each of us has a role in that process. Every compassionate act is one of resistance.

This shifts the focus of hope from outcome to process. When we choose to participate in healing, in doing what little we can to ease suffering, we embody a kind of hope that doesn’t depend on immediate change. It’s a quiet, resilient hope—one that says, ‘I will keep going, keep choosing, because this world, this life, and these people are worth it.’

4. Shabbat: hope-as-rest

‘Be joyful / though you have considered all the facts.’
—Wendell Berry, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

‘It is not up to you to finish the work.’
—Pirkei Avot 2:21

Hope can be exhausting.

The latest news comes in, and right away comes the call to rise up, to have your say, to do something. If the challenges we face are relentless, then surely we have to be relentless too?

Well, no. Not according to shabbat.

Shabbat—aka the sabbath, a weekly day of rest—implores us to stop, to step back, to reconnect with our worth beyond what we produce. Shabbat is a sanctuary, a divinely-ordained (commanded, even) pause, inviting us to acknowledge our humanity, remembering that our purpose is not merely to do the work—even the good work.

Shabbat affirms that life holds value simply in being.

Rest is a reminder that while our actions matter, the work of justice, healing, and change is bigger than any one person or moment. We acknowledge our own beautiful limitations, recognising that we cannot carry the world’s burdens alone. Shabbat teaches us that even when we step back, life continues, and the world does not fall apart in our absence.

Soaking in meaning

Building rhythm into our lives both gives us the strength to do the work, and imbues the work with greater meaning. Stepping back from the fight reminds us what we’re fighting for—life, beauty, wonder, joy, pleasure, love. You might feel guilty about soaking yourself in these things when the world seems to be falling apart, but shabbat says that you shouldn’t—it demands that you soak yourself in them all the more. We contribute not from a place of exhaustion or duty, but of love.

You do not have to be the hero. You do not have to be the solution to every problem. You are here to be alive, and can approach that life with trust, embracing the truth that you are part of a much larger arc of renewal. Speaking of which…

5. Anakephalaiosis: hope-as-story

‘It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy?’
—Samwise Gamgee, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’
—Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.

Anakephalaiosis is a Greek word meaning ‘to sum up’ or ‘to bring everything together’. It is used in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians when he describes God as ‘[bringing] unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ’ (Ephesians 1:10).

While it might seem as though I’ve started talking Christianese, the implications of this word are profoundly hopeful, and more far-reaching than anything ‘religious’. It is is about a thread of reconciliation that runs from heartbeat to epoch; from the human to the cosmic.

Anakephalaiosis expresses belief in an overarching story—a conviction that, somehow, all things are ultimately being drawn toward goodness, even if we cannot see it from where we stand.

Our deepest wounds

This kind of hope looks at our deepest wounds—both our own and the world’s—and dares to proclaim that they will not be the end of the story. More than that, it insists that these wounds are themselves part of it. What seems awful at the time can be written into a larger narrative that both includes and transcends the darkness.

You will have seen this at work in your own life. When I look back upon my moments of failure, heartbreak, anguish, I can see how they have been woven, slowly, by some tender hand into a bigger story. Seasons of brokenness, over time, become a chapter; and not the final one.

Anakephalaiosis is hope as a cosmic promise, a faith that the universe itself is bent on restoration. This hope does not dismiss or trivialise the hardships we endure; it holds them within a larger vision. It is the courage to press on, even when we do not see how the journey ends, believing that, however loud the shrieking of these days may be, they will not have the final word. Instead, they will be formed into larger anthems, ones in which the light, however troubled, however fading, still sings.

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Poem: Cellular; planetary; cosmic

‘The universe is invested in itself.’ Photo credit: NASA

Cellular; planetary; cosmic

You woke up this morning.
There is ground beneath your feet.
Within each handful of that ground
there are billions of creatures
just getting on with the business of making more life.
That ought to tell you something.

Hope is cellular.
Every second you lose a million pieces of yourself.
These are replaced, instantly, without you ever being aware of it.
Seven years from now
not one cell currently in your body
will remain.
This will all be done in spite of any despair.

Hope is planetary.
Your hemisphere will not always lean away
from the light. The days grow darker,
and then they don’t.
Spring will hardly be a surprise.
The Earth does not need your encouragement
to stay within the sun’s gravitational pull
and all its generosities.

Hope is cosmic.
The universe is invested in itself.
It is expanding faster than the speed of light.
There are countless galaxies that have not yet formed,
but will. The energy for all this creation already exists,
and is merely biding its time.
Gravity and thermodynamics and the consequences of supernovae
will not be stopped by your dejection.

Thousands of years of human history,
so much of it filled with anguish and ruin and woe and yet
here we are.
We continue to arc around the sun,
hearts beating, minds concocting billions of electrical impulses a second
and who knows what will become of any of it?
It’s all going on and on. Without or without you the world
will go on and on.
So you may as well join in.

©Gideon Heugh

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Coda: One more breath

When you are in the pit, the last thing you might want is words of encouragement from someone who is standing outside of it.

I don’t live in the US, and so am not as affected by the result of the recent election as much as some. I’m wary, therefore, of coming across as glib. I approached this subject with reverence, and also from within my own pit.

It's been the hardest couple of years of my life. I’ve lost two jobs, my spouse, all of my financial security, my home, my dreams. It's been hard sometimes to know how to keep going. But my daughter looks up to me, so I take one more breath, and again, and again. And tomorrow, we get another chance. We get to have another go. We're alive; we're here; we get to wander through all this beauty and tragedy and find those eyes to look into that make it all worth it.

Hope is real, even when life is at its most dreadful; its hand is reaching out to you, and some days it will be too difficult to grasp, but maybe, eventually, you will feel it pulling you up—a strength of light there in dark of it all.

You can lament. You can find the soul of yourself and others. You can choose to love. You can rest without guilt. And you can trust that the troubles that are shaking you and the world can be rewritten into a better story.

Hope does not depend upon your optimism; nor is it reliant upon circumstance. You might feel hopeless; but that does not mean that there isn’t hope. You might feel helpless; but that does not mean help is beyond you. Change is possible. Believe it, friends. Change is possible. Keep going. Keep loving. Keep rebelling. Keep reaching out. Life is worth the trouble.

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