Basic Trust

Capps (1995) articulates that basic trust is the necessary condition for hope: "hope is based on the assurance that a certain reciprocity exists between ourselves and the world 'out there,' that what we desire is congruent with what the other desires" (p. 145). If we yearn for love and care, trust entails that we believe there is an "other" who yearns to love and care for us. As stated, for Erikson (1964) hope is the first, most basic virtue and the ontogenetic basis of faith. Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. In Erikson's view, hope is necessary if life is to be sustained. Thus, hope is integral to healthy functioning; one recognizes an inner affinity between the earliest and deepest mental disturbances and a radical loss of hope.

The child's first encounters with trustworthy maternal persons - encounters that take place prior to speech and verbal memory - lay the foundation for hope. Once established as a basic quality of experience, Erikson suggests, hope remains independent of the verifiability of hopes. For adults, religious sentiment induces restored hopefulness. For Erikson, what begins as hope in the individual infant is in its mature form faith; by adulthood either one is invested in a formulated faith or has developed an implicit one. Through utilizing Erikson's eight psychosocial stages to formulate six related faith stages, James Fowler (1981) in Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning articulates how this happens. The stage of trust versus mistrust can be correlated with what Fowler terms "undifferentiated faith," where the seeds of faith, hope, and love are sown. Like Erikson, Fowler postulates an integral connection between the origins of hope and that of a religious consciousness, explaining that the individual's first "pre-images of God" have their origins in the stage of trust versus mistrust and are composed of his/her first experiences of mutuality.

To return to our earlier question, Which, then, comes first: hope or religion? If, as Capps argues, hope arises out of deprivation, then perhaps a Utopian vision, experienced as primary unity, started the religious ball rolling, i.e., an Eden which was lost at birth (Balint, 1968). Or does hope predate religion, as Erikson and Fowler seem to suggest? Is hope the foundation for faith and religious sentiment? Or, as proponents of attachment theory imply, do hope and a religious consciousness evolve together? Do positive attachments simultaneously yield strong hope and the beginnings of religious sentiment? Whichever is the case, it can be argued that one can live without religion, but not without hope. Perhaps, then, for those adults who do not develop a religious belief system, hope becomes associated

Hope and the Religious Imagination 79

with other expressions of imagination - creative pursuits such as music and the arts. Csikszentmihalyi's (1990) work, as we have seen, highlights the relationship between creativity and flow; flow applies to sports and any activity in which one loses oneself for a period of time. The experience of temporarily losing oneself- an experience of "eternity" - is a mystic sensibility that we return to again and again.