Hopes and Expectations
By The Very Rev. Gary Jones, Interim Dean
“If you seek God with prior expectations, you might find what you seek, but you will know nothing of God. ”Meister Eckhart (14th century)
When each of our three children was born, Cherry and I had great hopes for them. In each case, however, things did not work out as we had hoped. And as each child grew and veered this way and that from our hopes, we from time to time applied some loving pressure, hoping to get things back on track. All to no avail – things just didn’t work out as we planned.
Finally, and I don’t think it was a conscious thing on our part, Cherry and I sort of let go. And what we realized about our children was that, in each case, they turned out far better than we hoped. In fact, I did not know we could ask God for such miraculous children.
Parker Palmer, one of the most insightful spiritual writers of our time, once put it this way: “At some point, I had to stop trying to make something of my life and ask myself instead, ‘What is my life trying to make of me?’”
Very often, our hopes for our children are based on social or cultural norms of success, or on our own notions of what “a good life” looks like. We want what is best for them, but the truth is that our hopes for our children might have little or nothing to do with their souls and God’s unique calling for them.
Yet, our children love us so much that they will sometimes strain to live up to our hopes for them, while God is much more quietly and subtly calling them to a truly astounding life that is far more than anything we could have asked or imagined.
One of our boys is getting married this month. Cherry and I are over the moon about his fiancé and her family, and it is a dream come true to see how happy our son is. So, I’m trying to figure out the right time to tell them, “I know you have some great hopes and expectations for your marriage. But I hate to tell you, it’s not going to work out that way. It never does.”
The truth is, this is good news. The hopes and plans we have for marriage are frequently naïve and paltry, compared to what God wants to give us. And when our plans go awry, we often hurt each other, trying to get things back on track, in alignment with our separate expectations about how our marriage is supposed to unfold. The secret, of course, is to let go of our own plans, however painful that might be, so that God’s more miraculous plans might be born.
So, I want to say to our son and his fiancé, “I don’t think your marriage is going to work out the way you hope. I believe it is going to be far better than you hope. It’ll be painful at times, and I hate that for you. But often such pains are birth pains. And I believe that your marriage will become much more than you could have asked or imagined.”
And in this same vein, I want to say to the wonderful people of Christ Church Cathedral, “I know you have a lot of hopes and expectations for your new dean. He’s an amazing person who already loves you and believes in you, even though he hasn’t met most of you. Still, it’s not going to work out according to your hopes. It’s going to be far better. Let go, and stay open. God has in mind for you something greater than you can imagine.”
English