I was out shop­ping at one of my fave home décor stores when I paused to read this piece of quote art. It res­onated with me so deeply I just had to cap­ture it with my Iphone.  A lit­tle googling revealed that this gem of a quote is  from word artist, Anna Quach.

Hope rejects cyn­i­cism.   I love that and I need to hear it right now.  Because right now I am tempted to be over­run with cyn­i­cism with every­thing in my world.  With the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal scene where pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates sling oppo­si­tional research at each other as strat­egy and the one with the biggest cam­paign bud­get is rumored to win.  What hap­pened to cam­paign­ing with bold vision and fear­less lead­er­ship?  With pum­mel­ing right into the con­tro­ver­sies with an unapolo­getic point of view (hello,gun con­trol) rather than ambi­gu­ity and vague plat­i­tudes trans­mit­ting over the nightly airwaves?

I’m not only on the verge of becom­ing a cyn­i­cal Amer­i­can but also a cyn­i­cal ex-​​churched woman.   I don’t want to be and God knows I’ve been fend­ing off the demons of pes­simism con­cern­ing all-​​things-​​church for a num­ber of years now. But ever since releas­ing my book, Unla­dy­like: Resist­ing the Injus­tice of Inequal­ity in the Church,  I am receiv­ing reports on a weekly basis of women who have been betrayed, aban­doned, mis­guided and mis­treated by the faith com­mu­ni­ties they have loved.  Just yes­ter­day I spent an after­noon with a strong woman of faith who after years of  ser­vice and con­tri­bu­tion to her spir­i­tual tribe, was pushed out sim­ply because she pressed her lead­er­ship to reex­am­ine they’re com­ple­men­tar­ian stance towards women. By the end of it all, this woman of valor was mar­gin­al­ized and accused of being ungra­cious and divisive…simply because she spoke up and pushed for pri­vate dia­log with those in power.  Her rep­u­ta­tion has come under fire and trea­sured rela­tion­ships have now unrav­eled, sim­ply because she had the audac­ity to speak up against the injus­tice of inequal­ity that is hurt­ing the women (and men) of the com­mu­nity she loved and nurtured.

I admire the hit she was will­ing to take for the sis­ter­hood – for jus­tice!– yet it also fuels the hun­gry troll of cyn­i­cism that lies in wait  under the bridge in my psyche.

There are other rea­sons I hover at the edge of hope­less­ness about Church.  The empha­sis on power, con­trol, and image dis­il­lu­sions me.  The insti­tu­tional church, in all shapes and sizes and col­ors and sounds, has become a mirage of com­mu­nity to me and I won­der How Can I Remain a Christ Fol­lower When I Do Not Want to Be in Church???

My friend, Kathy Esco­bar, blogged about this recently.  She describes the sav­ing grace she found from the hounds of cyn­i­cism with this outlook:

i have decided that a much health­ier place for me to land is what i call “hope­ful real­ism”, accept­ing things for what they are in a more real­is­tic way while being open to pos­si­bil­i­ties.  - kathy esco­bar

That helps, and hon­estly I hope–yes, HOPE–- that I will  be able to resist the wave of cyn­i­cism that threat­ens to swal­low me whole.  Cyn­i­cism breeds hope­less­ness, and if I com­pletely lose hope in the col­lec­tive pres­ence of peo­ple of faith, well.…than what?

Hope is the dream of a soul awake.

This last sen­tence in the quote sign is a lit­tle can­dle in my world of dark. Though it would be the most sim­ple thing in the world to do, to com­pletely let go of my asso­ci­a­tion with the phe­nom­ena known as Church, with all it’s destruc­tive, demean­ing, oppres­sive and power-​​driven pat­terns, yet truth be told I am busted. There remains in me a per­sis­tent, relent­less strain of hope that despite the effed-​​upness of this insti­tu­tion, there is under­neath all the sys­tems of beliefism and image-​​enhancement, a wild beauty of a woman who is aching to emerge into her true self. The church is peo­ple and the church is Me.  Sys­tems come and go, like seven-​​headed snakes that grow another head when one is cut off.  My cyn­i­cism is like a seven-​​headed snake, too. I try to end the angst with all-​​things-​​church  only to end up with one more damn­ing piece of evi­dence of why the way we do church isn’t work­ing for me anymore.

I wish I had a nice, tidy way to end this post. I love happy end­ings.  I like that Kathy has landed in her shel­ter of hope­ful real­ism, and I hope to join her there some­day soon, but today I am in the wild bar­ren lands with­out a com­pass or a map.  I was told there was an oasis just over the hill, but the more I walk, the hot­ter it gets and what I thought I found turned out to be a mirage.

Church has let me down over and over again. And since I broke up with the IC (insti­tu­tional church) a few months ago,  all the old griev­ances are sur­fac­ing, much like they do when an old mar­ried cou­ple finally calls it quits.

I know I have some soul work to do, some hurts to heal and some dis­ap­point­ments to let go of. And I will. I am deter­mined to come out of this on the other side. I want that hope­ful real­ism that Kathy describes. I want to live unde­feated in the pos­si­bil­i­ties of what can be rather than  in the sor­row of what is not.

That is my hope.