critical hope

I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead!

— Lesslie Newbigin

To hope radically is to see the new possibilities for human flourishing where none seemed possible before. […] Radical hope, as I have been defining it, involves a deep confidence that there is a way of living meaningfully in this world, even when one does not yet have the concepts to understand what that meaning might be.

— Jonathan Lear

Hope in challenging times can’t be easy, can’t come naturally — that would be whistling past the graveyard. It requires us to, in Auden’s words, “Look on this world with a happy eye / But from a sober perspective.” We have to practice critical hope. How to do this? It’s something I have been writing about for years, and the key point is to refuse to take refuge in our familiar categories. We must make a point of not knowing where we are going, and improvise in trust. See:

vendoring culture

filth therapy

wander lines

improvisation in the briar patch

hypomone

sprawl