Session 5, Chapter 6

[Don and Joyce]

Here’s the study guide to spice up your reading and prime our conversations next Tuesday.  See you then.

Don

[David H Finke]

May I please express my gratitude, Friends – 

Rediscovering this which I had saved for later reading, it distinctly speaks to my condition in the present time. 

What a wonderful gift of insight and of words, both from the author and from you.

Your leadership, creativity, and sweet spirits are expressed in so many realms.

    With thanksgiving ,  -DHF

On Thu, Mar 8, 2018 at 5:45 PM Don and Joyce <djpa...@oberlin.net> wrote:

Here’s the study guide to spice up your reading and prime our conversations next Tuesday.  See you then.

Don

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[Peggy Malone]

What’s the book? Maybe I can get it and catch up with you.  I have a couple of free Tuesdays.

[David H Finke]

I don't have, and won't need, the book itself. Simply reading this fine summary from the Parkers gave me some spiritual sustenance that I have needed in these recent weeks.

 I will paste in below the handout which I believe Don and Joyce prepared. I had not been in their ongoing study group but have been deeply blessed by getting to know and work with them in concerns for Peace, justice, and creativity.

On Thu, Jun 14, 2018 at 8:16 PM Peggy Malone <malon...@windstream.net> wrote:

         In God's Peace,  -DHF

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Session 5

Chapter Six -- Hope: Re-imagined 

“Hope, like every virtue, is a choice that becomes a practice that becomes spiritual muscle memory. It’s a renewable resource for moving through life as it is, not as we wish it to be.” —Krista Tippett

 

1. Reflect on whom you listen to, what you follow and trust, as you develop your sense of the story of our time and what is possible in it. Is there a disconnect between the media narratives you follow and what you know in the world and people around you? Does the world you know reveal practical sources of hope alongside what is hard? Do you take the generative realities and possibilities around you as seriously as bad news? 

 

2. Sharing an example of her experience with the L’Archecommunity, Tippett speaks of hope in terms of moving forward, in terms of “signs, not solutions.” What are some signs—markers, guideposts—that help you see and trust in redemptive possibilities for you and the world?

 

3. Brené Brown says that her research and that of others shows that “hope is borne of courage.” How does this make sense to you? How have you been formed by what scared you, by moving through experiences where you didn’t always know you could get to the other side?

 

4. “Failure and vulnerability are the very elements of spiritual growth and personal wisdom. What goes wrong for us as much as what goes right—what we know to be our flaws as much as what we know to be our strengths—these make hope reasonable and lived virtue possible. They are part of our gift to the world.”   Have you seen this in yourself or someone you know?

 

5. “Almost everything and everyone changing the world now is what we’ve forever referred to as ‘under the radar.’ The radar is broken.”   Who do you think of when you consider this?

 

6. “I have a heart full, arms full, a mind brimful and bursting with a sense of what is healing us even as I write, even when we don’t know it and haven’t asked for it. And I do mean healing: not curing, not solving, not fixing, but creating the opportunity for deepened life together, for growing more wise and more whole, not just older, not just smarter.”  Where have you seen this kind of healing?  On the scale of your every-day life, do you see this kind of healing around you?

 

“Hope is distinct, in my mind, from optimism or idealism. It has nothing to do with wishing. It references reality at every turn and reveres truth. It lives open eyed and wholehearted with the darkness that is woven ineluctably into the light of life and sometimes seems to overcome it.

 

7. What in this chapter, or in the entire book, has especiallycaptured your imagination, given you new insights?

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