Finding hope this morning
I don't know about you, but more often than I want to admit, my mind wanders to anxious places that doubt whether even really committed people working toward a common purpose can spur change that matters. Sure, I know plenty of stories of social and personal transformation. But, I've also heard lots of stories of failure.
Reading from this edited collection keeps my soul alive and encourages me. It isn't full of simplistic platitudes or quick fixes. Each reading from it leaves me thinking and feeling more creatively, spaciously, and honestly about change.
Here is a quick excerpt from Loeb's introduction:
“Nothing cripples the will like isolation. By the same token, nothing buoys the spirit and fosters hope like the knowledge that others faced equal or greater challenges in the past and continued on to bequeath us a better world. Even in a seemingly losing cause, one person may unknowingly inspire another, and that person yet a third, who could go on to change the world, or at least a small corner of it. Rosa Parks's husband, Raymond, convinced her to attend her first NAACP meeting, the initial step on a path that brought her to that fateful day on the bus in Montgomery.
But who got Raymond Parks involved? And why did that person take the trouble to do so? What experiences shaped their outlook, forged their convictions?
The links in any chain of influence are too numerous, too complex to trace. But being aware that such chains exist, that we can choose to join them, and that lasting change doesn't occur in their absence, is one of the primary ways to sustain hope, especially when our actions seem to insignificant to amount to anything.”
Posted in on Aug 23, 2010 - 10:54 AM
This morning I went for a jog, stretched, and then opened The Impossible Will Take A Little While: a citizen's guide to hope in a time of fear edited by Paul Loeb.I don't know about you, but more often than I want to admit, my mind wanders to anxious places that doubt whether even really committed people working toward a common purpose can spur change that matters. Sure, I know plenty of stories of social and personal transformation. But, I've also heard lots of stories of failure.
Reading from this edited collection keeps my soul alive and encourages me. It isn't full of simplistic platitudes or quick fixes. Each reading from it leaves me thinking and feeling more creatively, spaciously, and honestly about change.
Here is a quick excerpt from Loeb's introduction:
“Nothing cripples the will like isolation. By the same token, nothing buoys the spirit and fosters hope like the knowledge that others faced equal or greater challenges in the past and continued on to bequeath us a better world. Even in a seemingly losing cause, one person may unknowingly inspire another, and that person yet a third, who could go on to change the world, or at least a small corner of it. Rosa Parks's husband, Raymond, convinced her to attend her first NAACP meeting, the initial step on a path that brought her to that fateful day on the bus in Montgomery.
But who got Raymond Parks involved? And why did that person take the trouble to do so? What experiences shaped their outlook, forged their convictions?
The links in any chain of influence are too numerous, too complex to trace. But being aware that such chains exist, that we can choose to join them, and that lasting change doesn't occur in their absence, is one of the primary ways to sustain hope, especially when our actions seem to insignificant to amount to anything.”
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Comments
Aug 24, 2010 - 04:58 AM
Thank you, Scott. I’m afraid that I feel like this much more often these days than I did when I was younger. I think that we still fight to be optimists is at least a good sign!
Adding this book to my reading list.
Aug 24, 2010 - 04:44 PM
Scott, thanks so much for posting this. Just the excerpt above is a bit of a safe harbour in often turbulent seas.
Like Sara, I will be adding this book to my reading list! I’d say it’s a must-have for the would be change-agent! 
Shawn Strader
Aug 23, 2010 - 01:07 PM
Those words are pretty comforting, like a nice hug from someone you thought you wouldn’t see again.
Thanks Scott.