Quotes About Hope

when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born—and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.

we all wanted this because let's face it, it's so inspiring and such a relief when people find a way to bear the unbearable, when you can organize things in such a way that a tiny miracle appears to have taken place and that love has once again turn out to be bigger than fear and death and blindness.

The truth is that your spirits don't rise until you get way down.

Frequently, as so many poets and psalmists and songwriters have said, the invisible shift happens through the broken places.

being sober delivered almost everything drinking promised.

This is who I want to be in the world. This is who I think we are supposed to be, people who help call forth human beings from deep inside hopelessness.

What a mess we are, I thought. But this is usually where any hope of improvement begins, acknowledging the mess. When I am well, I know not to mess with mess right away; I try to let silence and time work their magic. [p. 100]

So I pray for people who are hurting, that they be filled with air and light. Air and light heal; they somehow get into those dark, musty places, like spiritual antibiotics. We don't have to figure out how this all works—"Figure it out" is not a good slogan. It's enough to know it does.

Gravity and sadness yank us down, and hope gives us a nudge to help one another get back up or to sit with the fallen on the ground, in the abyss, in solidarity.

At this point, a reasonable person can't help thinking how grotesque life is. It can so suck, to use the theological term. It can be healthy to hate what life has given you, and to insist on being a big mess for a while. This takes great courage. But then, at some point, the better of two choices is to get back up on your feet and live again.

There is cracks, cracks, in everything, that's how the light gets in.' I had cracks but not the hope.

It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.

Help for the sick and hungry, home for the homeless folk, peace in the world forever, this is my prayer, O Lord. Amen.

When we agree to (or get tricked into) being part of something bigger than our own wired, fixated minds, we are saved. When we search for something larger than our own selves to hook into, we can come through whatever life throws at us.

We have all we need to come through. Against all odds, no matter what we've lost, no matter what messes we've made over time, no matter how dark the night, we offer and are offered kindness, soul, light, and food, which create breath and spaciousness, which create hope, sufficient unto the day.

hope, as Chesterton said, is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate.

I've gotten endless signs of the greatness of God's love and hilarious care, but I always end up needing a newer sign, maybe one that is cuter and more spangly.

It can be too sad here. We so often lose our way.

Rumi: "Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.

How are we going to get through this craziness?' I asked. There was silence for a moment. 'Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe,' he said.

If courage is not there, if the possibility of things getting better is not there, listen a little harder.

What helps is that we are not all crazy and hopeless on the same day.

Then it came to me: I was asking the wrong question. The right one is: Where is God in gang warfare? And the answer is, The same place God is in Darfur, and in our alcoholism, and when children are bullied: being crucified.

I do believe that God is with us even when we're at our craziest and that this goodness guides, provides, and protects.