wild hope.

“Hope is the living heart of asceticism. It teaches us to deny ourselves and leave the world not because either we or the world are evil, but because unless a supernatural hope raises us above the things of time we are in no condition to make a perfect use either of our own or of the world’s true goodness. But we possess ourselves and all things in hope, for in hope we have them not as they are in themselves but as they are in Christ: full of promise. All things are at once good and imperfect. The goodness bears witness to the goodness of God. But the imperfection of all things reminds us to leave them in order to live in hope. They are themselves insufficient. We must go beyond them to Him in Whom they have their true being.

We leave the good things of this world not because they are not good, but because they are only good for us insofar as they form part of a promise. They, in turn, depend on our hope and on our detachment for the fulfillment of their own destiny. If we misuse them, we ruin ourselves together with them. If we use them as children of God’s promises, we bring them, together with ourselves, to God.
‘For the expectation of the creature waiteth for the revelation of the sons of God… Because the creature also itself shall be delivered from the servitude of the corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God’ (Rom 8:19-21). Upon our hope, therefore, depends the liberty of the whole universe. Because our hope is the pledge of a new heaven and a new earth, in which all things will be what they were meant to be. They will rise, together with us, in Christ. The beasts and the trees will one day share with us a new creation and we will see them as God sees them and know that they are very good. Meanwhile, if we embrace them for themselves, we discover both them and ourselves as evil. This is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil — disgust with the things we have misused and hatred of ourselves for misusing them.
But the goodness of creation enters into the framework of holy hope. All created things proclaim God’s fidelity to His promises, and urge us, for our sake and for their own, to deny ourselves and to live in hope and to look for the judgement and the general resurrection.
An asceticism that is not entirely suspended from this divine promise is something less than Christian.”
– Thomas Merton

Thought you may appreciate this. I read it the other day, right before seeing your blog about hope!