Hope is where the heart is
The Hope Chronicles redefines the meaning of neighbor, starting with one simple question
By Jessica Hamlin 05/20/2010
Hope is a small word with big implications.
Arcadia’s Sam Lundquist began learning just how big after hearing some of LA’s hopes when he left Iowa to attend USC in 2003.
“I studied broadcast journalism and political science and I would say, rather than those disciplines or industries being important to me, it was more the idea of people and the idea of problems,” says Lundquist. “So at USC I spent a lot of time, not even intentionally, talking to a lot of the folks who lived in the area.”
In 2008, Lundquist’s eyes were opened further when he took part in the first Urban Plunge community service event with Eagle Rock’s Christian Assembly Church, a program that immerses them in the issues surrounding inner-city life and homelessness.
“We talked with this woman for about a half-hour and she told us about her kids and that she was pregnant with her third kid and trying to move back to the Midwest,” says Lundquist, who recalls that, oddly enough, the woman was from around his own small hometown. “She had been living in shelters along Hollywood Boulevard,” he recalls.
Lundquist says he was moved by hearing her story and “really understanding that there are so many people with lots of stories to tell, and there’s lots of ways we can help, whether it’s sitting and spending time with someone or doing something tangible to help meet a need at that moment.”
After toying with the idea of starting a site that reported only good news, or gathering stories from each block of Los Angeles, Lundquist decided to get to know people and serve them better with The Hope Chronicles. Armed with a video camera, audio recorder or journal, Lundquist and other volunteers dubbed “community listeners” approach strangers on the street, in stores, on planes and pretty much anywhere else to record their answers to one simple question: “What is your hope?”
“Let’s tell the story of hope, because that’s such an important question to ask people,” says Lundquist. “It really gets to the heart of a person — what they need, what they want — and it does it in a positive way. … Hope is what we want to happen and what we know can happen somehow. It’s more than a wish and it’s more than a dream, I think.”
What about Bob?
Since Lundquist was raised in a friendly, tight-knit community in the Midwest, it is somewhat normal for him to strike up conversations with people, while folks from more socially withdrawn areas like Southern California may balk at the thought of sharing their hopes with strangers.
Yet, dozens of blog, video and journal entries on thehopechronicles.org reveal intimate hopes from Rodeo Drive employees, Grand Canyon tourists and many others.
“I think if I don’t [get nervous] there’s something wrong, because I am asking a deeply personal question and also breaking down these barriers that we’ve set up, especially in LA, of very personal, space-oriented people,” says Lundquist. “We don’t go up to people in the middle of dinner, but we’ll talk to store owners or cashiers or people who are sitting in the park. I’m still going up and kind of invading that person’s life for a second, but once that question comes up, people are honestly shocked that someone is caring about that aspect of their life.”
Skeptics often ask Lundquist why he is asking about hope or if he is selling something. But baring peoples’ hopes is not a business gimmick, he insists.
So what is Lundquist’s hope?
“It is my hope that we would start connecting more and talking more and really understand what
it looks like to be a neighbor, and be there for them if you can,”
says Lundquist.
In October, Lundquist was in downtown LA testing his new video camera and, though The Hope Chronicles was just an idea at that point, he decided to start recording hopes.
He eventually stumbled upon a sick homeless man asking for money.
“As he would approach strangers and begin to speak, his breathing tube would get clogged with mucous-y gunk, which would make him cough and hack this gunk all over people,” Lundquist blogged on The Hope Chronicles site. He could barely talk, he was dirty and he was sick. No one was responding to him, and, frankly, I didn’t want to deal with him either. So I walked quickly past.”
After the man approached him for money, Lundquist eventually felt convinced, so he and the man, whose name is Bob, talked as they walked to an ATM. Sam asked Bob about hope and recorded his answers on film.
“We have the Disney hopes, which is what I call them, and those are the peace, love and happiness hopes,” says Lundquist. “Those are the things that people say because I think they think that’s what people want to hear. The most important thing is, we don’t just ask that question, but the bigger question is, ‘Why?’”
Bob first hoped for honesty, relating it to abuse he experienced as a child, then said if he could hope for one thing it would be love.
“I wasn’t expecting that, and, for him, honesty came out of a place where no one was honest with him as a kid and no one told him that his abuse was wrong,” says Lundquist.
Despite revealing a painful past, Bob told Lundquist at the end of their encounter, “This is the first time I’ve smiled in a week.”
“That experience really humbled me to looking around to my neighbors and understanding them,” says Lundquist. “I look at these people and some of them could be on cloud nine and having a beautiful day, while others could be just as down as he is. Maybe not homeless or sick, but having dealt with some extraordinarily painful things in their life.”
After walking away from Bob, Lundquist broke down into tears and realized that others need to have these kinds of conversations.
Donny Osmond smile
Hope found Lundquist again while he was sitting at the Paseo Colorado Starbucks a couple months ago. Customer Diane Corson asked him if anyone had ever told him he has a Donny Osmond smile, and that sparked a conversation about her life and hope.
“It scared me at first, because I wasn’t sure what to do,” says Corson. “I felt like I was on the spot, but I thought I could talk to this young man and I could trust him.”
He then asked her what she hoped for, and Corson said, “I hope for my health to get better,” then elaborated about her enlarged heart and a bad back due to years of being a nurse.
Lundquist posted their discussion on The Hope Chronicles site and blogged soon after about another conversation he had with Corson, during which she spoke of foot problems.
A few weeks after his second encounter with Corson, Lundquist accompanied a friend to a chiropractic office, where he told Dr. Steve Smith about The Hope Chronicles. That day, Smith browsed the site, randomly reading Lundquist’s blog about his conversation with Corson. Smith immediately commented on the post: “Please extend an invitation to Diane to come into my office and I will take a look at her foot problem, no charge.”
“I sensed an element of kindness and compassion in this woman and I thought this is a lady who sounds like someone I wouldn’t mind helping out,” says Smith.
Lundquist found Corson at Starbucks and told her the news, even driving her to the doctor’s office for an appointment.
“It floored me,” says Corson. “I thought that was really wonderful and it takes a friend to do something like that … Sam made me think a lot and get up off the pot, excuse the expression, to do something.”
Smith and his wife are also involved in the community, offering free treatment to those especially in need. In 1997, they started the Pasadena Pacers Club, a free community fitness program in Pasadena for people of all fitness levels.
“I think we all have to be of service to each other, and I would guess most people would like to do something to improve the conditions of mankind,” says Smith. “I think we get so mired in our own lives that we sometimes lose sight of that mission.”
Corson has returned to Smith for further appointments. Since she’s frequented that Starbucks daily for at least seven years, Corson is a community listener in her own right. She knows every employee’s name and story and even cooks for some of them on occasion.
Lundquist recently told Corson he wants her to become a Hope Chronicles community listener and gather hopes from her Starbucks family.
“Oh boy, I’m ready!” she exclaims.
Partners in hope
The Hope Chronicles grows more each day and collaborates with other organizations for events such as Big Sunday Weekend, the largest regional community service event in America, held the first weekend in May.
Lundquist and other community listeners recorded people’s thoughts on serving that Sunday. Then asked each person, “What is your hope?”
“On a personal level, I was really surprised how a camera and a focus driven by this one question was a way to interact with people who I normally wouldn’t give myself permission to talk with, and I don’t mean that from a class standpoint,” says Sarah Shoemaker, an Art Center College of Design student who collected hopes at an LA school and Skid Row arts program. “But the camera, in a way, was disarming for me and the participants and kind of welcomed conversation and that was really surprising, and I think the younger children were surprisingly sincere and wise.”
One 10-year-old boy hoped not for the latest toy, but that he could spend more time with his family. When they spent time together, they learned something about each other that they didn’t know before.
The biggest hope-collecting event to date will take place on Saturday when The Hope Chronicles partners with Christian Assembly’s Urban Plunge day of service.
“It’s been a call to love and serve the city in all sorts of different ways, and we’ve partnered with about 40 organizations in Pasadena, Eagle Rock, Glendale, downtown LA and Skid Row,” says Lundquist.
The first part of the day, volunteers will serve at organizations to meet needs like building and painting or working with shelters, food pantries and kids. Then 200 people will spend the second part of the day getting to know their neighbors in Pasadena and other cities by asking about hope. The community listeners will reflect on their experiences and the hopes, and conversations will be displayed on thehopechronicles.org.
And to think it all started with one question.
Go to thehopechronicles.org to learn others’ hopes, reveal your own hopes, become a community listener or donate toward the cost of recorders and journals.
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