{"id":4577,"date":"2023-04-18T20:54:48","date_gmt":"2023-04-18T19:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/?page_id=4577"},"modified":"2023-04-24T15:42:38","modified_gmt":"2023-04-24T14:42:38","slug":"hopes-work","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/may-2023\/hopes-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Hope\u2019s Work"},"content":{"rendered":"
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David Gee<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Quaker movement has strived from the first to face the world as it is \u2013 in care, thoughtfulness, and faith. At times courageous, at others faltering, the intention to be a community of hope still runs like a thread through the Quaker story.<\/p>\n

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From Amazon Books<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But what can hope mean in our own disturbed age of anxiety and affliction? As an activist, I\u2019ve been working with these queries for a while now, and in this I\u2019m far from alone. So many of us are feeling pressed to ask what shape hope can possibly take as horizons close in and optimism retreats. Is this also you?<\/p>\n

To help explore the practical meanings of hope today, I\u2019ve been gathering various resources at hopeswork.org<\/a>. You\u2019ll find some queries to dwell on, some suggestions for cultivating a conscious hopefulness, and a blog taking a creative look at some of the themes. Please have a look round.<\/p>\n

I started hopeswork.org after hearing activist friends struggle to hold faith with their work. It led me to wonder why we seldom pause to wonder what hope means for us or to enquire after its health.<\/p>\n

Clearly, as the strain builds in our communities and societies, and on the earth, shallower hopes are easily uprooted \u2013 they don\u2019t survive experience for long. But the very unease of our times can also urge deeper hopes to the surface.<\/p>\n

My own journey with these questions has led me in unexpected directions \u2013 away from hope as a prediction about tomorrow and towards hope as a clutch of commitments that need making today, and without pushing the doubts away.<\/p>\n

For a hope that bets everything on a better tomorrow doesn\u2019t bear our predicament well, nor is it adequate, I feel, for a journey in faith. But a hope that invests in the life within us and around us, and finds promise there, still commends itself \u2013 today, tomorrow, always.<\/p>\n

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David Gee is the author of \u2018Hope\u2019s Work: Facing the future in an age of crises\u2019 (DLT, 2021) and lives in Oxford.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Painting by Arzhia Habibi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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This Month’s Forty-Three Newsletter Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n