Your Task is to make Hope Possible

Last week,John Battle (Chair of the J&P Commission and Pro Vice-Chancellor at Leeds Trinity University) addressed students at a graduation ceremony. What follows is part of his speech.

….Can I suggest that the work of hopeful encouragement of others now passes to you, our Leeds Trinity graduates,to shape your future life journeys.

The challenges facing us in today’s troubled and often confusing fast moving world reflected in constant media headlines of all kinds are real…whether it’s our planet’s high temperatures, a world increasingly steered by new technologies, the growth of artificial intelligence, the environmental and ecological challenges, pollution and epidemics, issues of trade and migration, living standards and inequalities and uneven human development and sadly increasingly conflicts wars and violence these challenges of our times need all our talents skills and commitment more than ever locally and globally and across a wide range of disciplines and activities that now need to be joined together in new and complex ways.

Worryingly these complex challenges seem to slip into modes of defeatist pessimism, if not despair, a loss of belief that life can be different and better. As the critic Raymond Williams said ” our task is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing”.

But how do we find and develop hope?      

I believe that you are now best placed. Pope Francis advises young people not to be afraid of ” dreaming big”. He wrote recently

“In a climate in which politics is discredited, young people who share their perspectives in new ways to mobilise leadership are a breath of fresh air. It is young people (he writes ) who have the energy and courage to go beyond that which is socially correct. We do not speak of young people who seem like sheets, starched, ironed and ready to be put away in the drawers of comfort. No! We hope for young people who are committed to one another and desire to shake up the system to make space for themselves “.

 I’d suggest that you have been working together here at Leeds Trinity in a laboratory of hope developing resources to surmount the pessimism of our times and getting in good shape to face the future.

Whatever your diverse subjects, you have faced difficult questions and learnt to overcome them or live with them positively, facing the big questions of lice, developing a confident sense of mystery and wonder and even transcendence taking us beyond ourselves.

The poet Maria Rainer Rilke wrote

” The work of the eyes is done

 Now go and do the work of the heart

  With the images captured inside you”

I remember seeing Banksy’s iconic image of a little girl letting go of a heart shaped red balloon appearing on a wall under Waterloo Station in London in 2002. Banksy put a caption under it ” There is always hope” before the council cleaned it off. Since then there have been discussions about whether the little girl reaching after the balloon is  reminding us to hold in to hope even when it feels out of reach . But is she reaching for it , to catch it , or rather letting her heart shaped balloon go , rise up. and  away and inspire others?

The theologian JB Metz at the Second Vatican council always stressed that hope is not primarily about our own survival but rather giving hope to others. He wrote ” Only when we hope for others and act out that hope can we hope for ourselves”. So perhaps you can regard your degree certificates not just as the mark of academic excellence that it is but as a proof of your own personal resilient hope. And as next phase of life is opening up for you as our new Leeds Trinity graduates the responsibility is passed on to you to go out as ” ambassadors of that hope” contributing to shaping a better future world in the communities in which you will live and work. You each have great potential to make a real difference, to inspire with new vision and deep hope those you live and work with in future in whatever capacity you find yourself

The challenge therefore  is for you to share and give your hope to others that for them ” the star of hope may rise”.