Hope renewed

RECENTLY, a group from the Mid Thames Area Quaker meetings attended an online workshop entitled Hope As A Spiritual Practice, run by Woodbrooke, the Quaker college in Birmingham.

The facilitator asked us to bring an object or poem which symbolises hope for us personally. We shared these in small groups.

It struck me that everyone in my group brought an item representing our children or grandchildren, symbols of our hope in/for future generations.

In our discussions, we came up with the idea that hope might be a mindset that we choose.

We can pay attention to the things that make us feel hopeful in our personal lives, or pay attention to the things that make us feel hopeless.

We agreed that it is easier to have hope if we feel we have agency.

Hope may be a mystery, a glimmer of light in a dark room, or it can move mountains.

We can build our capacity to hope.

One of the resources suggested to us, which I recommend, is an episode of the Melvyn Bragg radio series In Our Time, entitled Hope. You can access this at bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00017vl.

The panel discussed the development of ideas about hope, including the myth of Pandora’s jar. Only hope is left in the jar.

A consolation, or another evil?

Later, it is the companion of faith and love (1 Corinthians 13).

Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic, wrote in his book, Disturbing the Peace, that hope is “an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpromising the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is.

“Hope is not the same thing as optimism.

“It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out”.

Nicki Sutcliffe, from Wokingham Quakers, writing on behalf on Churches Together in

Wokingham