What's in a Hope Library?

This week, my friend

Tara Penry

at The Hallelujah Book & Hope Letter asks, "What books (essays, shows, etc.) have given hope?”

She is building a “hope library” of Substack articles on books that have given people hope- to celebrate her Substack birthday! (I hope you’ll check it out-I can’t wait to learn from others where they have gathered hope from books…and not books).

I’m sharing a rare mid-week post-so I can participate in building a Hope Library on Substack!

Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash

"Hope is a thing of extraordinary power. It feeds the soul and yet it can torment it" (Nurse Jenny Lee)

Call the Midwife

I’m a book person.

I’m a reader.

I love books…but…

2024 was a difficult reading year for me. I blame my breast cancer diagnosis.

Last year, my mind was so occupied with trying to process a cancer diagnosis, navigate treatment, and recover physically, mentally, and spiritually. I could not read- it wasn’t for lack of trying! I started lots of books. As soon as there was a hint of trial, dis-ease (or disease), or suspense, which is what books are—a problem that must be solved-drama to be resolved-trials to overcome—my mind would shut down. I would panic and close the book…for months and months, this pattern went on.

I finally had to quit trying because reading, which I thought would save me, was sinking me.

So, I stopped trying to read and started watching (rewatching) Call the Midwife.

The BBC series Call the Midwife has given me hope. (so much hope!)

Call the Midwife is based on Jennifer Worth's memoirs about her time serving as a midwife with an Anglican order of nuns in Poplar, London. Poplar is a poor section of London near the Thames, where the primary income was working the docks in the late 1950s-60s. It was a time and place of great poverty and overcrowding, where echoes of World War 2 were still felt.

Call the Midwife is about young midwives and Anglican nuns who live and work together in Poplar, providing medical and birth care to women.

Hope is sprinkled throughout every episode as the midwives and nuns support women through normal, complicated, and tragic births. They witness the best and worst of human nature and life in community.

They always do their best to help and hope for each other and their community.

Call the Midwife has given me Hope…

• When women come together, problems can be solved.

• Love is a power all it’s own.

• People with diverse beliefs, convictions, and ideals can live and work together in harmony.

• A cup of “well-sugared” tea and a biscuit can go a long way towards healing.

• Rest doesn’t have to be a production; it could just be a cup of tea with friends.

• Goodness hides in out-of-the-way places.

• Minds can change.

• Science and medical advancements make life better.

Call the Midwife has been a hope-filled companion over the past year. It’s provided me with an escape from my own reality to a time and a place that are equally more complex and simple than my own reality.

The nuns show me the grace and elegance of a life of faith. They pray the hours, practice obedience, observe The Great Silence, and have no personal possessions- yet such wealth.

The midwives are strong, intelligent women who march into any situation with confidence, grace, and not a hair out of place—women living out their vocation and calling, loving people, and bringing light into dark places. They give me hope!

A {FEW} OF MY HOPE NOTES:

I love Sister Monica Joan for so many reasons, not least her love for books! She sets out to order her library when they are forced to move into a new home. “I have put Plato here, next to Mr. Freud, so they can be companions in their ignorance.” Sister Monica Joan is a delight. “Put down the bananas; they are superfluous to the situation.” (When a labor mother arrives at Nonnotas House late at night in great distress.)

I want Sister Julienne to be my spiritual director. She listens with a palpable expansiveness. She never judges. She invests, but she knows what she is responsible for and when she has to let people sort out their own messes. “I've come to the conclusion there are only two reasons for ever doing anything: one is love, and the other is fear. It would appear that both were at work in this case.”

Nurse Lee wrote the (real) books on which the BBC series is based. When she leaves the show, her notes and journals open and close each show. The opening and closing of each show are poetry-wisdom—my favorite part of the show—and they always point towards love, hope, and goodness.

"Love is never the only answer. But it is always the best, the simplest, the one most likely to withstand the test of time. Love is the beginning. It should be the final word."

- Jennifer Worth (Nurse Jenny Lee)

"The liturgy is of comfort to the disarrayed mind. We need not choose our thoughts, the words are aligned, like a rope for us to cling to." - Sister Monica Joan

“Now and then in life, love catches you unawares, illuminating the dark corners of your mind, and filling them with radiance. Once in awhile you are faced with a beauty and a joy that takes your soul, all unprepared, by assault.”

― Jennifer Worth, The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

“Was it love of people?' I asked her.

'Of course no,' she snapped sharply. 'How can you love ignorant, brutish people whom you don't even know? Can anyone love filth and squalor? Or lice and rats? Who can love aching weariness, and carry on working, in spite of it? One cannot love these things. One can only love God, and through His grace come to love His people.”

― Jennifer Worth (Nurse Lee)

The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times

I’m almost exactly a year past my last active cancer treatment. (Yipee!)

I’m finding joy (and hope) in reading again. But I’m still drawing hope from Call the Midwife.

Call the Midwife will always hold a special place in my Hope Library.