EDITORS’ NOTE

There’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

transformation, and reliable enough to stand the test of time. “This is the kind of hope,” Bradley continues, “that demands to be reckoned with. If not, it will reckon with us.”

The body that is the hope of Christians is that of Jesus Christ. It is a body that was beaten, hung up, and pierced. It is a body that was given for us. It is a body that was raised, that ascended, and that provides the basis for a living, breathing hope.

This issue seeks to explore that hope: Where does it come from? What does it mean for us? How can we take hold of it? We all wrestle with these questions, and perhaps there is much to learn by wrestling together.

The second poem about “hope” that I think of is by Daniel Donaghy, and it ends:

Fear is the knot in a golden cord twisted around the heart, without end or beginning. Hope is the hand that unties it. (3)

It takes an embodied hope to loosen the heart from the grip of fear. And perhaps as we navigate the coming months, separate but together, we may catch a glimpse of the hand, the body, the hope.

Alvin Tan (Editor-in-Chief)

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.

3) D. Donaghy, “Hope.” Start with the Trouble (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2009).