Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Handbook of Hope - Emerging Stories Beyond a Disintegrating World
    Handbook of Hope - Emerging Stories Beyond a Disintegrating World
    Handbook of Hope - Emerging Stories Beyond a Disintegrating World
    Ebook119 pages1 hour

    Handbook of Hope - Emerging Stories Beyond a Disintegrating World

    By Cath Connelly

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPilgrim Spirit
    Release dateNov 5, 2020
    ISBN9780648996224
    Handbook of Hope - Emerging Stories Beyond a Disintegrating World

    Related to Handbook of Hope - Emerging Stories Beyond a Disintegrating World

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Unwanted Attraction

      Oct 9, 2022

      Unwanted Attraction
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Braided Essay as Social Justice Action

      Aug 17, 2017

      NICOLE WALKER is the author of two forthcoming books, Sustainability: A Love Story and Microcosmology. Her previous books include Egg, Micrograms, Quench Your Thirst with Salt, and This Noisy Egg. She also edited Bending Genre with Margot Singer. She

      10 min read

    • Article

      Cannes: Terrence Malick's 'A Hidden Life' Is A Return To Form And A Spiritual Call To Arms

      May 20, 2019

      CANNES, France - In the eight years since Terrence Malick won the Palme d'Or at Cannes for "The Tree of Life," his magisterial drama about childhood's end and the spirit's awakening, the standard critical line is that he has become an artist lost in

      4 min read

    • Article

      Jessie Gurunathan

      Dec 10, 2020

      Jessie Gurunathan
      2 min read

    • Article

      Wisdom for The Future

      Dec 20, 2021

      Wisdom for The Future
      10 min read

    • Article

      THE antifragile AGE

      Jul 21, 2019

      THE antifragile AGE
      5 min read

    • Article

      Working It Out…

      Sep 27, 2022

      Working It Out…
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Four P's of Economic System Change

      Mar 24, 2022

      You recognise the multiple and interlocking crises troubling the world. You take on board the warnings of scientists that acting to address environmental breakdown is beyond urgent. You know that communities across the globe all too often struggle to

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Future Is Here

      Nov 9, 2020

      The Future Is Here
      6 min read

    • Article

      How Not To Feed The World

      Aug 10, 2021

      Imagine you live by the Atlantic Ocean, close enough to hear the waves breaking. In those waters swim small fish. They are a superfood: rich in the nutrients needed by your bodies – and those of your children. But these fish are destined for the diet

      1 min read

    • Article

      Fashion’s New World

      Aug 20, 2022

      Fashion’s New World
      16 min read

    • Article

      For More Trustworthy AI, We May Need an ‘Interpreter’

      Jul 6, 2017

      A team of researchers is working to build trust between humans and artificial intelligence (AI) by creating an “interpreter” that can explain how an AI arrived at the answer to a specific question. In an age of self-driving cars and autonomous drones

      4 min read

    • Article

      AGENTS OF Change

      Apr 13, 2020

      What on earth is a Reformational church? The Reformational church is God’s agent of constant change from glory to glory, conforming to the image of His Son. That’s why we are straightening and aligning the church to what Jesus intended in the first p

      4 min read

    • Article

      Not In My Backyard: The Reality of Human Trafficking and 5 Steps to End It

      Feb 18, 2020

      — ‘Human trafficking’? That can’t possibly be a real thing happening around me… Or could it?  Those were the questions running through my mind as I sat on my friend’s couch in Sydney, Australia back in 2008 listening to her tell me about a new nonpro

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Healing Power of Nature

      Jul 16, 2016

      IT SOUNDED MORE LIKE A LARK THAN a scientific study when a handful of Japanese researchers set out to discover whether something special—and clinically therapeutic—happens when people spend time in nature. They were inspired by a new recommendation f

      5 min read

    • Article

      Joanna Macy

      Nov 23, 2021

      Joanna Macy
      2 min read

    • Article

      Rewilding: Stepping Back To Take Action

      Jun 26, 2022

      Economically driven development has left Australians with broken ecosystems, devastated biodiversity and reduced resilience to the impacts of climate change. Amanda Sturgeon explores how urban and regional rewilding projects can help our natural syst

      5 min read

    • Article

      Alextbh.

      Jan 2, 2020

      Alextbh.
      7 min read

    • Article

      The New Science of Hope

      Apr 25, 2023

      The New Science of Hope
      4 min read

    Reviews for Handbook of Hope - Emerging Stories Beyond a Disintegrating World

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Handbook of Hope - Emerging Stories Beyond a Disintegrating World - Cath Connelly

      Introduction

      Several years ago Tony, a man I barely know, walked straight up to me in the local library and without preamble or explanation asked me, ‘Cath, how do you find hope in a disintegrating world?’ We began a long and important conversation. Tony had named the question of our time. What is there to ground us when it seems as if the foundations on which we have always relied now appear fragile and permeable?

      It’s all a question of story. Stories are how we know who we are. They become our inner shelter of belonging. We source our sense of self through stories; we need stories to shape our identity. We are formed as stories emerge to frame our boundaries. Seamus Heaney, the great Irish poet laureate tells us that:

      When a nation is in trouble it often returns to its traditional stories to look for direction and healing, to regain a sense of what made it great in the past and what will nurture it into the future… A region or a nation has its story concretised in shrine, statue, museum. A person without a story is a person with amnesia. A country without its story has ceased to exist. A humanity without its story has lost its soul. It is to save our soul today that we need to explore our stories, the great epics that have been preserved and handed down in good times and bad, until they belong to us today, until we ‘arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

      Heaney speaks here of reclaiming our foundation stories. The trouble is, right now we are between stories. We can no longer trust that Earth has unlimited capacity to provide for our rampant consumerism. We no longer trust our governments, our churches, our law enforcement agencies, our families. These meta-stories within which we framed our knowing no longer hold true. It is easy to create a long list of the implications of living between stories. Mental illness, suicide, mass migration of refugees, environmental devastation – all these are part of a world that appears to be disintegrating. Hope is now a fragile concept. The cosmologist Thomas Berry says of this:

      The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not yet learned the new story. Our traditional story of the Universe sustained us for a long period of time. It shaped our emotional attitudes, provided us with life purpose and energised action. It consecrated suffering and integrated knowledge. We awoke in the morning and knew who we were. We could answer the questions of our children. We could identify crime, punish transgressors. Everything was taken care of because the story was there.¹

      We live in one of the most exciting and precarious moments of human history, shaped by both unprecedented pressures and opportunities. At this time, for our species, for our planet, we need to find new stories, stories of hope. We are living at one of the hinge moments of time and it has always been the way that transformation takes place at such hinges or turning points in human history. It is the nature of nature is to transform when it hits a crisis of limits and this assures us that we are going somewhere, that this chaos has its meaning. We can participate in its unfolding. We each have a story to tell that speaks of a new world-view and our part in it. These stories are emerging. In many disciplines there is evidence of people constructing new visions of a future that will hold the psyche of our species and the integrity of our planet, together.

      Past stories have focused on what differentiates humans. Now is the time to work towards the integration of who humans are in the whole of creation. This is the work that brings hope, when we come to know ever more deeply that we are completely one with the rest of creation. This is the ancient yet ever emerging story. This is the story we need to reclaim and this is the story we must write anew. ‘While human beings as a species are no different from the higher animals in terms of substance, the one striking difference is the human capacity to wonder, to pose open-ended questions, and to discover responses.’² Let us use this capacity to wonder, to ask questions and seek answers as we write the stories that are emerging beyond our disintegrating world.

      What you have in front of you is a very practical Handbook. It is one entry point into exploring a world beyond despair. There are seven chapters, each looking at different aspects of our 21st century crisis. There could have been fifty chapters, there could have been one hundred; there are so many areas that need to be re-examined through the lens of hope. The chapters in this handbook cover a broad range of topics, from changing agricultural practices, mental health issues, living a life of radical simplicity to how our indigenous sisters and brothers have been able to maintain hope despite all that they have experienced. You will find that each chapter begins by inviting you to reflect on the main ideas that are relevant to each particular topic. You will then find two or more case studies of actual stories where people have reached beyond despair and found new ways of thinking, new ways of being. There are questions for reflection, there is a list of books to read that will draw you deeper into each topic. Work with this Handbook alone or maybe form a small discussion group. You will find here the material you need to explore our emerging stories, to begin telling your own stories, to find a reason to hope.

      Chapter One

      Hope as a catalyst for change

      The deepest impulse inside is the impulse of love and creativity. Love is the inner impulse towards more freedom, empathy, intimacy of relationship.

      When we combine this empathy with the new capacities and our internal ‘yes’ to being who we are becoming, we become a new being in consciousness. We can transform the worries and challenges of life into optimism and our ‘yes’ is tipping the scales of life forever towards good.

      (Barbara Marx Hubbard) ¹

      When she speaks about the need to seriously address the ecological disaster of our times, deep ecologist Joanna Macy is insistent that we reimagine the future in a way that both confronts the looming environmental disaster and looks to ways of being actively engaged in being part of the solution:

      Here we are facing this enormity of breakdown and huge shift. What do we want to do now when things are so dicey? And with whom do we want to make peace? That’s beautiful. When you start this process (of asking questions about the future) so many ideas come to you. What I found is that you get really great enthusiasm from this process. Thinking about the kind of world you really, really want to be part of. And that’s good because we are going to need that kind of energy, we need enthusiasm for what’s to come. We’ve got to remember this is an exciting time and not get scared, because when you get scared you get mean.²

      What a marvellous lens through which to see the emergence of a new paradigm! Rallying enthusiasm for change. We are indeed at a time of great turning. Some have called this a ‘hinge’ time between one story and the next. It is liminal time when we know we can no longer live as we used to, but that which is emerging is still to be created. Although we need to harness every scientific discovery that will aid us in these coming times, we also know that we are not going to change humanity with new technology alone. Something deeper needs to happen; we need a shift in the heart of humanity.

      We know the problems that need

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1