I like this quote: Hope has two beautiful daughters

‘Hope has two beautiful daughters: Their names are anger and courage.
Anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.’

This quotation is widely attributed to St Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430), though in fact no scholar has found any actual record of these words in Augustine’s known works.

I’m more interested in the ideas than their possible source. They have their own wisdom and authority, I suggest.

First, it is interesting that someone nominates these two experiences, anger and courage, as daughters. What is signified in that I do not know and frankly do not find it helpful to spend any time on it.

More significant is the positive presentation of anger. I have been working for some time with a research student studying the experience of people whose lives are shaped by unhealthy anger. For many people, the experience of habitual anger causes shame or guilt or other distress. In so many ways there is an unwritten or unspoken ‘rule’ that says anger is a bad thing. We ought not to be angry. And so much  pretence flows from this attempt to avoid or deny the reality of our anger.
But here is the suggestion that anger is in fact a ‘child’ of hope. It arises from the conviction that things should not be how they are! Anger, here, is an appropriate response to so much that is wrong in the world—whether it is the abuse of those who are poor, defenceless, or subject to the control of powerful people or social forces; or perhaps the abuse of the earth and its resources; or perhaps something more specific and personal, that is wrong or deeply hurtful.
It is not wrong to be angry, in situations of hurt, injustice, deprivation or exploitation.

But hope does not stop with anger. If it did, it would breed resentment and bitterness, and hope would die.
The wisdom of this statement suggests that hope also gives rise to a constructive response: the desire and energy to make things different. This energy is called courage, which literally means ‘heart’ or ‘heart-strength’. Hope gives us the heart to resist how things are and the strength to work for that change. Usually the ‘us’ here is in the plural, but often it has to begin with some one person first raising the possibility of change, things being different.
Hope gives us courage, together, ‘to see that things do nor remain as they are’.

I like this quote: for the permission it gives to those who rail against how things are, and the prod it gives to those who have lost heart and think that we just have to put up with it all. We have to do more than survive: we live by reaching out for a better way, a better world, for our children, for our neighbours, for the earth, for ourselves.

I like this quote for its challenge and promise that we can do more than get angry with how things are. We can work for that better way. In hope.