Hope is Work
It’s important to say what hope is not: it is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine. The evidence is all around us of tremendous suffering and tremendous destruction. The hope I’m interested in is about broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act.
Rebecca Solnit • Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope.
Rebecca Solnit • Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
To hope is to “borrow grace.” It is not naive optimism. Hope admits the truth of our vulnerability. It does not trust God to keep all bad things from happening. But it assumes that redemption, beauty, and goodness will be there for us, whatever lies ahead.
Tish Harrison Warren • Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep
Hope is a gift you don’t have to surrender, a power you don’t have to throw away. And though hope can be an act of defiance, defiance isn’t enough reason to hope. But there are good reasons.
Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously hea
... See moreRebecca Solnit • Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
Where there is hope, there is difficulty.