For years Penelope wove the burial shroud each day but secretly unraveled it each night. She bought time with no assurance that Odysseus would return in time or would ever return. The “banality of resistance" -- yes.
Speaking of weaving, your point about building networks is well taken. Simply attending and leaving mass rallies, whatever the rallies' tactical value, can reinforce the notion that "mass man" (Merton's term), individually and collectively, can go it alone.
I man I know, sentenced to life in prison, had a profound religious experience there and read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning in the prison library. Frankl's work to help others in Dachau helped my friend redeem the time in prison by focusing on helping others. It prepared him for a work of profound community organizing. His pardon came, just as Odysseus came and the Allied liberators came, but of course that's not the point. "The substance of things hoped for," I suppose, is the point.
Thank you for this. The Penelope image is exactly right—time bought without guarantees, faith expressed through repetition rather than certainty. I also appreciate the turn to Frankl and your friend: redeeming time by orienting it toward others, even under total constraint. That seems to me the quiet thread running through all these cases. Hope shows up less as expectation than as practice.
For years Penelope wove the burial shroud each day but secretly unraveled it each night. She bought time with no assurance that Odysseus would return in time or would ever return. The “banality of resistance" -- yes.
Speaking of weaving, your point about building networks is well taken. Simply attending and leaving mass rallies, whatever the rallies' tactical value, can reinforce the notion that "mass man" (Merton's term), individually and collectively, can go it alone.
I man I know, sentenced to life in prison, had a profound religious experience there and read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning in the prison library. Frankl's work to help others in Dachau helped my friend redeem the time in prison by focusing on helping others. It prepared him for a work of profound community organizing. His pardon came, just as Odysseus came and the Allied liberators came, but of course that's not the point. "The substance of things hoped for," I suppose, is the point.
Thank you for this excellent essay.
Thank you for this. The Penelope image is exactly right—time bought without guarantees, faith expressed through repetition rather than certainty. I also appreciate the turn to Frankl and your friend: redeeming time by orienting it toward others, even under total constraint. That seems to me the quiet thread running through all these cases. Hope shows up less as expectation than as practice.