Last spring The Intelligent Life, a journal published by The Economist, ran an article claiming that Americans are overall an "unhappy lot." Two years ago, The New York Times published "Liberated and Unhappy," about the diminishing degree of happiness among American women (Her.meneutics weighed in too). And recently I stumbled across the website for The Happiness Project, a book by Gretchen Rubin that shot to number two on the NYT bestseller list within its first week of publication last year. I am still dizzy from the swirl of quotes and tips on the website about how to pursue happiness and join in on booming nationwide happiness-projects. The amount of literature being penned on happiness suggests that as a culture we want to believe that happiness is something we can will and achieve, and that it is our inalienable right and our due. At times, I too am guilty as charged.

I cannot help reflecting on our cultural obsession with happiness against the backdrop of Easter, these 50 days of invitation to dwell in the reality of resurrection. If the church could claim to have an official "happy season," this would be it. Christ is risen. New life is possible in all circumstances. But, instead of the temptation to appropriate a Christian interpretation of a cultural phenomenon, perhaps the real place to begin is to consider that happiness may not be a word in our Christian vocabulary.

That's not to say Christians cannot experience happiness. Rather, we recognize happiness as transitory as opposed to a telos after which we earnestly seek. Reflecting on Scripture and the call to discipleship, the closest Christians might get to notions of happiness is by practicing the spiritual discipline of hope, something that looks remarkably different from Western definitions or constructs of happiness.
It's a discipline to which Christ calls us as surely as we are called to service, prayer, fasting, and other disciplines. What we ultimately hope for is the full healing of creation, because we recognize that life is not fully as it should be. Ironically, it is this universal recognition that propels the secular hamster wheel spinning toward illusions of finding happiness.

Choosing the discipline of hope over the pursuit of happiness starts with acknowledging that just like the Christian liturgy, our habits shape us. Each time we practice being hopeful, we open ourselves to being formed into creatures who might recognize glimpses of resurrection life this side of the kingdom. Despite the broken circumstances of our individual and collective lives, we remain foolishly open to expecting bread instead of stones, and to the certainty that there always exists another reality to the one in which we find ourselves.

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As Christians we face the decision each day of which narrative we will live into for one more day: the one where Christ is Lord, or one of the gazillion others up for grabs. It is an ongoing discipline to choose the former, to choose hope especially when the odds seem to be against a hopeful future.

Like happiness, hope can be hard to maintain. But unlike happiness, it is not a chase down a rabbit trail of new purchases, rehashed advice, and mantras. Rather, hope cultivates a distinct posture toward the world that is grown and sustained through conscious daily practices enacted within our varied circumstances, the good and the bad. It is a discipline we engage in daily whether we feel like it or not, whether we see any immediate results or not. It witnesses to another sovereignty besides ourselves, and another claim that what we see or experience in this fractured world, delightful or deeply painful, is not the lasting reality.

Hope has holy and human relationship at its center. When Christ appeared after his resurrection, the first thing he did was create the church. God knows that choosing and claiming divine reality and holy imagination is not something we do easily or quickly. Rather, we assist one another to practice the spiritual disciplines that foster abundant, hopeful life. Practicing hope is a way of learning to be fellow burden bearers and memory-keepers for one another when the realities of our lives threaten injustice, fear, pain and darkness, or simply threaten to suggest God is not able.

Hope acknowledges that the sundry list of life's difficulties are never what God intends for a healed kingdom, and that God never leaves us bereft. At one stage of my own life, while in a committed relationship to a recovering alcoholic, practicing hope meant waking up each day and choosing to resist the constant temptation to query my boyfriend about how he was "doing" and whether or not he would attend an AA meeting that day, but still recognizing the importance of rejoicing in marked points of sobriety. Hope believes that all circumstances are redeemable at the foot of the cross and yet celebrates our difficult human efforts to live into that redemption. For my girlfriend exhausted with the disappointment of infertility, hope resembles accepting the invitation of friends who desire to take on the burden of prayer for this particular struggle. Hope recognizes that we do not walk alone and sometimes we carry others for part of the journey.

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Hope does not anticipate or rely on a happy ending. Hope believes that the God who came to give us abundant life is always at work.

Enuma Okoro was born in the United States and raised in Nigeria, Ivory Coast, and England. She holds a Master of Divinity from Duke Divinity School where she served as director for the Center for Theological Writing. The author of Reluctant Pilgrim and co-author of Common Prayer (with Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove), Enuma lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. She blogs at EnumaOkoro.com.

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