I watched my daughter, Sarah, wait for nine months for the magical creature within her to  emerge from her womb. She set up the nursery, ate wholesome food, gave up alcohol, read articles on “what to expect”, and did everything in the name of he-who-was-coming, Archer. 

Sarah changed as she waited, as though another woman waited within for just this moment. The changes she was making were changing her. She was changing for him, making room in her life and heart for him. It was as if Archer was already among us, we longed for him so, talked about him constantly, told stories of how he moved within her, predicted his personality.

And then he came, precious in every way. We were entranced. Nothing was too grandiose to describe him. A kaleidoscope of genes and temperaments, awesome and spellbinding in every way. I held him and trembled.

What I experienced firsthand with this experience is what Karl Rahner, the German theologian, called the radical nature of hope. Hope is not passively waiting for something we expect will happen. It is the active, passionate involvement in what is just beyond our grasp, yet already mysteriously present. Hope is radical — “going to the root or origin of a thing” — when it is rooted in life, in the present moment, not in some future event.

It’s not waiting to celebrate what is yet to come, but living as if it has already arrived — just as my daughter, Sarah, lived and thought her pregnancy as if her baby was already among us. Her whole focus and energy embraced him as a living, breathing member of our family, unseen by the naked eye, yet present.

There was no question whether she would love him, or if he would love her. She loved him, without having to see him. There was a clearing away of any conditional, provisional thinking of what should be; there only was, and it was Archer. Sarah demanded no prerequisite, gave no ultimatum of who was to appear. Archer would appear, and that was enough.

Sarah was grounded in a state of radical hope — living her present moment as a reaching out to and a participation in the unfathomable and unpredictable possibility that was already becoming. She spent her whole pregnancy seeing and embracing a reality she could not see with her eyes, living as if she could already see it, hold it, love it. To be spiritually alive, I believe we have to live out of this kind of radical hope every day .

Just as Sarah marveled at what was taking shape in her womb, we are called to marvel at what is taking shape in our lives:   Whatever is taking shape in me right now is exactly what I need to be the person I am meant to be. Everything I need and want is already within my grasp. What I am doing now is exactly what I need to be doing to ready myself for whatever is next to come, already in motion towards me. 

Whatever pain I experience has meaning and teaching that will instruct me about my life and about the direction I need to seek.  I do not have to suffer just because I experience pain or sadness. I can discover the healing power that is already in it, even though I cannot see it with my eyes, feel it in my heart, know where it leads me. I believe I have the power to birth it out of the pain of what troubles me now.

My future is already within me and I embrace it wholly, without knowing it fully at this time. If who I am becoming, or if what shape my life is taking, is not what I know to be best for me,  I have within me the wisdom and the power to take the next step to make the changes I need. It is all, right now, within my grasp.

Living with this kind of hope, rooted in the present moment as containing all I need to become whole and healthy, provides a sense of joy and resilience that sustains me on the journey, an assurance of enoughness and trust that quiets my angst.

For me, personally, being a first-time grandmother of such a magnificent creature has opened up space in me for this kind of hope. When I hold my grandchild, I hold my future. He is a part of me going forth, on and on into future generations of which I already am part, because of him.

Archer is, indeed, an archer whose bow sends arrows of life outward into an unknown sea of family yet to be known and loved. I touch my future through him, and I contribute to his future by the loving way I hold him now. Is this not what we who believe in a Creator God mean when we say we live in the security that we are part of God’s future?