Be led by the Spirit in Hope is the theme of today's prayer for Christian unity. Hope. What does hope mean in the face of our global, national, local, and personal experiences at this point in the unfolding of the history of the universe? And how do we image and story the Spirit who empowers and enlivens that hope?

Our prayer speaks in the language of our tradition, language which has perhaps become familiar to us in a way that it no longer enlivens imagination, recreates spirit or enkindles new hope. Perhaps for too long we have cried out "Abba! Father" and have forgotten that the Spirit speaks in many tongues, evokes many images, sends us out from the comfort and the known of our tradition to search in new places.

In a world that passes before us in our weekend newspapers, across our nightly television screens. A possible peace in Northern Ireland, a hope that enters the hearts of many, the spirit alive in our world. And yet that dream of peace so easily shattered when a group from one side of the conflict marches through the streets of their rivals and fresh violence erupts. What does it mean to be led by the spirit in hope in the face of a conflict that it seems impossible to end, of dreams for peace that are so easily shattered. How do we imagine, how do we hear the story of hope or discern images of the spirit in the hearts of women and men, boys and girls. The spirit becomes manifest in acts of reconciliation, in the tenacity of hope. It is manifest in the pain I hear in the words of Deidre McMullen a Sister of Mercy of Northern Ireland who writes on the Mercy list which crosses the globe of work for reconciliation which struggles to take hold in hearts of young women and men whose whole lives have been shaped by hatred and embattlement. This is the spirit struggling to lead in hope.

And as the political, social, and economic fabric of Indonesia has been rent during recent weeks, where do we find the Spirit leading the human family in hope? We saw young soldiers open fire on their peers killing six of them in a peaceful demonstration, The jubilation at the resignation of President Suharto, the tentative moves to seek justice in the face of the profound exploitation of a country or the young woman who handed a flower to the soldier whose gun had killed or could kill her co-students. It is not easy to see, not easy to know just where and how the spirit of hope leads and how we ought to respond.

Much closer to home during this last week, we were invited to remember two areas of local, national and perhaps personal history in which the shaping and moulding spirit is at work in our times. We sought to be attentive around our nation to Reconciliation week with Tuesday being 'Sorry Day'. We might each simply recall how the invitation to remember, to enter into reconciliation in a particular way was taken up by us on Tuesday. How were you touched by the reconciling spirit as she moved through our nation. And it was also a week for remembering the victims of domestic violence, reminding us of the genderisation of violence not only within our homes, but our churches, our cities, our way of life. These two events came together for me as I watched two young women, one an indigenous Australian and another of European descent dance to a song which remembered the life of an aboriginal woman of South Brisbane who had suffered untold violence from her husband and from the Anglo-European system in which her life was enmeshed. The spirit breaks through in a story, a dance, a moment of encounter in the face of memories and events which are horrendous beyond our imagining. And women and men hope.

The Advocate will come to convict the world of sin, of righteousness and of justice. Indeed she is already here as she confronts, invites, challenges us in all the experiences of our lives, the political turmoil of our world, the challenge to reconciliation and the pain of women and children subjected to untold violence. As Elizabeth Johnson says, "all experience, the whole world... mediate[s] God's Spirit... the negative, positive, and ambiguous, the orderly and chaotic, the personal and political", all that has encountered us and that we have encountered during recent days. The Spirit shapes us to listen with renewed hearts and spirits to the movement for conviction of structural sin, the movement toward righteousness and justice. To be led by the Spirit in hope is not to know easy answers or simply to repeat tired formulae.

It is a new heart and a new spirit attentive to moments and movements which will help us to be ever attentive to the cries of our world which we hear daily, to the cries of the Spirit in all those voices. It is a new heart and new spirit which will stretch our dreams and hopes not only across the globe but also invite us into the mystery of the universe itself, that creation which is groaning in labour pains, straining toward a new birth. How does one hope in the future of our fragile universe in the face of multiple detonations of nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan? The Spirit which enlivens our universe is crying out to us today perhaps even more so than in the days that Paul heard the groaning of creation. She is inviting us to be attentive not only to the human community but to the entire ecological system and it is here that we may find new images and metaphors which will enliven our theological imaginations. The autopoiesis that scientists and biologists have brought to our attention as characteristic of life systems and which features disequilibrium in which even the very small can have a significant influence on the whole-disequilibrium which is not a symbol of chaos and loss of the spirit of God which animates the universe but a symbol of life and hope [what a challenge to the fixity we can so easily slip into in our faith and our theology - a God of fixity]. And the influence and impact of the small asks of us a new type of attentiveness not only to each aspect of our life experience but of the unfolding universe in which we are immersed.

To be led by the Spirit in hope into the twenty-first century requires of us a new heart and a new spirit. attentive to the profound mystery unfolding in every aspect of our lives and the life of the universe, active in interaction with a humanity which will be alive to the Spirit in a way which cannot be controlled but will always be in constant flux and change, interconnected across the globe and yet groaning toward righteousness and justice in our personal and local lives. In this way, the story of the spirit, the images of the spirit within our christian tradition will be enlivened anew, expanded and given new meaning to sustain us as we are led by the spirit in hope toward a world that is charged with the grandeur and mystery of God which is ours to discern.

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