A sermon at South Nassau Unitarian Universalist Congregation (SNUUC) May 25, 2025 · 10:30 am ET
"Wise hope" is a term popularized by the anthropologist and Zen Buddhist teacher, Joan Halifax. Wise hope is clear-eyed, grounded in reality. I believe that for us to lean into wise hope, we need to reimagine our relationship with time. We need to learn to dance with both the sense of time every meditative tradition teaches us - this moment, this breath, this "now"... And, what has been called "deep time" - time in the geological and cosmological scale. In this relaxation of the "vice of time," we cultivate wise hope. In the words of Roshi Joan Halifax, "It’s when we realize we don’t know what will happen that this kind of hope comes alive; in that spaciousness of uncertainty is the very space we need to act."
