Grateful Hope: Passion for the Possible

Hope is the shaper of dreams, the tiller of possibility. It gives life to our longings — the aspirations we have for ourselves, as well as those we carry for the people we love and for the larger world. Far more than blind optimism, hope is a radical stance and practice, a way of being that is informed by our personal and collective histories and that empowers us to act on behalf of an unknown future. 

Amidst life’s challenges, however, hope can sometimes feel elusive or even naive. We may find ourselves asking: What role can hope possibly play in finding our way to ongoing peace, equity, and ecological health? Isn’t it just a temporary salve or even a kind of turning away from the truths of the world? Grateful hope offers a pathway firmly rooted in the realities of our lives while attuning us to the possibilities that exist in the unimaginable future. Br. David Steindl-Rast offers an important distinction between the individual hopes we carry and hope as a way to live, a way of being open to what we can’t yet envision. He writes: “There is a close connection between hope and hopes, but we must not confuse the two.  We set our hopes on something we can imagine. But hope is open for the unimaginable.” A grateful hope is rich with the unimaginable because it is a destination where the horizon is always receding.

While we may occasionally glimpse the bottom of our hope reservoirs far too clearly, we can begin to refill them by cultivating grateful hope. In doing so, we equip ourselves with the capacity to plot a path forward in the face of uncertainty, enhance our sense of belonging, savor the beauty of the world, and contribute to our individual and collective futures even when we can’t fully imagine them. The resulting individual benefits are great: increased resilience, stronger relationships, and lower burnout among them. The collective benefits are even greater — empowering us to help create the equitable, just, and peaceful world for which we long.