Hope.  This word is a very personal thing for my life and my philosophy. 

People who live with the abuses of capitalism; who have little food and have little or no education about nutrition, hit and miss housing and health and dental care, people whose money has little buying power, people who see family and loved ones die miserable or purposeless deaths or lead powerless lives, can not be expected to nurture and forgive the Christian ideology of Hope.  To quote Chris Carmichael, international middle distance and Ironman champion, “Hope has never been the harbinger of great successes.” 

How do people suffering cancer or mental health disorders feel hope when we have lost many friends, never actualize our dreams and so see our futures shrivel like a virtual world?  Specific to the mentally ill, the poor,  and to people who live at risk who have been “de-personed” by bureaucracies and individuals who derive their self-worth and ego by their professions which are situated to control others, how do we survive such  social ignorance and prejudice.  How can we negotiate when our very survival means that we must oppose the comfort of class and race prejudice, the fascistically enforced bureaucracies in the psychiatric or medical system, the legal system, and the RCMP.  As the prayer goes, “God save us from those that would help us.”

How do the destitute and people at risk feel hope when they are raped by police, social workers, psychiatrists or see their friends murdered by predators?    Today, we celebrate a belief that marks us as delusional and self-satisfied.  Hope, is in fact, everything we dislike about Christianity,

And yet, it is the dream state for the genesis of social justice.  It is the foundation of principal which has made us create the social gospel, socialist democracy, the United Church of Canada, feminism, restorative justice, and for what it is worth, the United Nations .

In what was to become the most famous coming-out party in the world, Harvey Milk- Godfather of  GLTBQ  activism in the United States, created a political platform, equality and justice for the GLTBQ community in the United States at a time when GLTBQ where regularly submitted to violence from their families, communities and the police force.  What he carried in his political movement as he became the first out-Gay man in politics in the United States was the knowledge that what he did was greater than himself.  As that,  as a good Jewish son that he was, and though he suspected he would be assassinated – and he was – he acted as a Christ for the human population of our planet.  What he lived when he acted was derived from his humble statement, “You gotta give ‘em hope.”