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.
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:
