Notes for the Week Fourth Sunday after Advent December 22 2019

Dear friends,

I’m not much into bumper stickers, they clutter up perfectly well-designed trunks, they mess with car paint and they try to mess with my mind.  Driving behind a car that says, “I bet Jesus would be using HIS turn signals,” is a less-than-disguised imperative that the driver thinks I’m supposed to learn from and obey.  Jesus gave loads of signs and signals for people to turn and obey, and pretty much everybody ignored him.  Usually, I try very hard to ignore bumper stickers, because I don’t like being told what I’m supposed to think.  I don’t have any interest in how someone voted in the 2004 election or what they think is funny, especially when it is clear what they think is funny is actually ignorant, rude and offensive.

During rush hour, however, one doesn’t get much choice.  You get to know the back end of someone else’s vehicle pretty well when you’re creeping toward home at 10 mph and, if they planned it right, it’s very hard to avoid their bumper sticker.  After forced learning about everything from how someone’s child made honors in school, or that someone’s other car is a  unicorn, one does tend to tune out.

Yet, all this being said, just a few days ago, I happened to drive behind a sticker that made me smile and whose message has remained in my mind and heart long after the driver flipped the car’s signal and turned left.
This bumper sticker simply announced, “Dopeless Hope Fiend.”  At first it didn’t mean much to me.  But after about 30 minutes of unavoidable eye contact with the message, I began to like the person inside the car, about whom, I assume, the message referred.  The sticker didn’t hold any expectation that I should conform and become a Dopeless Hope Fiend, myself.  It held no imperative to the world that we should all become Dopeless Hope Fiends, but nevertheless, I decided that I was already a member of the club.

I don’t take drugs, and I don’t think too many people I spend time with take drugs, yet we all can confess to having our little cravings and vices and we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to kick the habit of eating too much of this or that, or trying to kick the habit of watching too much television instead of getting outside in the fresh air, shopping too much, or just trying to kick the habit of keeping the glass half empty instead of half full.  You have to work at dropping some of your favorite vices to become truly “dopeless.”  But you can hold on to a full measure of hope.

I think Jesus would say we should all become Dopeless Hope Fiends, if he saw one of those “What would Jesus do?” bumper stickers. In a world that seems to test our hope at every turn and seems to work hard to drain hope completely away in many parts of the world, we need to shore up as much hope as we can.  In fact, we need to keep shoring it up to make sure we never run out of it.

As Christians, at any time of the year, but most especially in late Advent when we prepare to celebrate, anew, the Nativity of our Lord, we are all invited to become card-carrying members of the Dopeless Hope Fiends club.   We are acutely aware of all things made possible again, all things made new and pure, and we can be lifted up out of our dopey complacency by all the hope we dare to keep and feel in our souls.  The Hope that is soon to come among us, shines beams of Hope that reaches to every part of the planet and on into the infinite cosmos of God.  And, come Christmas time, we can shore up all that hope to help us keep ahead of the world’s need to take it away up ahead.

So……yes…..I’m a Dopeless Hope Fiend.  The driver of the car has no idea of the impact his bumper sticker made on this flawed, tired human crawling along in the car behind.  But I give thanks for that driver for reminding me, simply, that no matter what, a true Dopeless Hope Fiend never, ever loses sight of hope.

You can be Dopey, Grumpy, Sneezy and the rest….but that’s driving in a different direction with a whole different message.   So, on Dasher, on Dancer, on Prancer and Vixen, On Comet, on Cupid, On Donner and Blitzen and…..oh yes, you too,  Rudolph, you little Dopeless Hope Fiend, you!

We journey together,
Mother Esme+