Can You Describe This?
Joshua White Saturday, 1 March 2003
In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a woman, with lips blue from the cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there):
Can you describe this?"
And I said: "I can."
Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face.Leningrad, 1 April, 1957
From "Requiem," by Anna Akhmatova
I work at a faith-based institute that has as one of its core principles the mission to "make hope tangible in the present." I have often wondered what exactly that means. The reason for making hope tangible is not in itself complicated; the nature of Christian faith clearly compels us to make known our hope in the kingdom of God. In fact, our faith is grounded in the belief that this hope is real and of value, and that, as we pray "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," we can play a real role in making it come to pass.
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