Hope's Work

'They've named the possibility that encounters with the violence of the lie may throw us into uneasy thoughtfulness, a newly passional openness to the world that the lie can no longer colonise so easily.' This is the second of two articles on hope and a politics of thoughtfulness.

'I think a hopeful culture would be wary of believing the future needs our fixes, our blueprints for a better life. It would sooner trust the open query, which foregoes the need to be right and instead reveals what matters. Hope welcomes the thoughtfully mistaken word over the brashly correct one, because only the first can be counted on in the long run.' This is the first of two articles on hope and a politics of thoughtfulness.

'...the life in and around us deserves to irrupt into our consciousness and seize us of it worth, to throw us off our detached calculations of right and wrong and urge us homewards towards the intimacy of attention.' This is the second of two articles on hope and a politics of care.

'...my hope attaches more to the very many more people who struggle fitfully to push their circle of care outward – the outcome of the effort matters, but the effort itself counts for more...' This is the first of two articles on hope and a politics of care.

'You can’t save the soil if you don’t know what it is, and you won’t know what it is if it hasn’t spent time under your fingernails.' The last of four articles exploring hope in the face of the ecological crisis.