editor’s note
T
here’s enough material about how we are living in unprecedented, unfamiliar, and uncertain times. We hear countless stories in the news, watch countless reports from the government, and read countless emails from the university about arrangements for term. This mini-issue of Through a Glass Darkly is not about that. Rather, it is about hope—the hope that we all seek to tide us through this season. The word “hope” brings to mind two poems. The first is by Emily Dickinson, which begins: “Hope” is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all –1 Dickinson paints a delicate picture of a fluttering creature that is the embodiment of a sweet, undemanding hope. And perhaps this is the kind of hope we wish to have too—delightful, constant, and celestial. But ‘delicate’ is really the other coinface of ‘fragile’, and a feathery hope is essentially ethereal and fleeting. When you pit a dainty thing against the weight of reality, it is not difficult to predict which will be victorious.
My friend Bradley puts it like this: “Full-bodied hope is a thing with flesh.”2 You need something corporeal to confront the realness of lockdown, furlough, and death tolls. It must be strong enough to bear our burdens, powerful enough to effect true 1 E. Dickinson, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers.” Poems, ed. by T. W. Higginson & M. L. Todd (Boston, MA: Roberts Brothers,1891). 2 B. Yam, “Hope is a thing with flesh.” The Yale Logos.
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