The Book of Joy

elements, knowing that, in time, the storm will pass.”
As the Archbishop was explaining, hope is the antidote to despair. Yet
hope requires faith, even if that faith is in nothing more than human
nature or the very persistence of life to find a way. Hope is also nurtured
by relationship, by community, whether that community is a literal one or
one fashioned from the long memory of human striving whose
membership includes Gandhi, King, Mandela, and countless others.
Despair turns us inward. Hope sends us into the arms of others.
And then the Archbishop turned to me and made it so personal yet so
universal.
“In many ways it’s the same kind of thing as love. Why did you
propose to Rachel? What made you think it was going to last? You know
you didn’t have evidence. A lot of people were as madly in love as you
were with her early on. And a few years later, they divorced. But you
knew in the depth of your being, this is she for me, as she also said, this is
he for me. And, well,” he said with a laugh, “you turned out to be right.”