Hope and peace

Another festive season is with us and as we turn towards family, friends, community, rituals, and gentle remembering, I wish for peace. 

Peace within, peace between us and peace between nations. 

I also seek hope - believing that what we do, in small ways will make life better somewhere and somehow for some others.

Wherever you may be, and however you may spend the time, may your days be bright and beautiful, may you be safe, and may you find and celebrate moments of peace.

Hope

 It's funny how things come around, come into focus.

My dad is currently involved with articles around hope and asked us for any words or images we may have had that might help the newsletter. And so we looked about the studio and found a few.

I loaned him my copy of Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark  and will trickle some of her hope quotes from the book here.

“I believe in hope as an act of defiance, or rather as the foundation for an ongoing series of acts of defiance, those acts necessary to bring about some of what we hope for while we live by principle in the meantime. There is no alternative, except surrender. And surrender not only abandons the future, it abandons the soul.” RS

“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal... To hope is to give yourself to the future - and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.” RS

“Hope just means another world might be possible, not promise, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope.” RS

“Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes–you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and knowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. ”  RS

“To hope is to gamble. It's to bet on your futures, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.” RS

Through our new office window I look for this light each night. It has appealed to me ever since we moved here and it has taken a while for me to work out the understory and the appeal.  I think it's like a lighthouse.  It feels as if it stands there shining for those who need to see it.

I love its constancy and its beacon-like nature. The calmness of it, withstanding whatever weather, shining.

My own small version of hope in the dark.

“Your opponents would love you to believe that it's hopeless, that you have no power, that there's no reason to act, that you can't win. Hope is a gift you don't have to surrender, a power you don't have to throw away.” RS

Changing the world...

I was hoping to find some simple words about staying positive and continuing to work towards peace and equality. You know how you sometimes feel like you need a personal boost or a bit of a lift?

I recalled we had seen these words on a poster in an exhibition in Stockholm last year and thought to myself they were strong and positive and deserved an outing.

So I went to my stash of paper offcuts, all trimmed to business card size and grabbed a handful of them (well...a 75 piece handful!) and got printing.

I recalled I hadn't seen an attribution at the exhibition; so Barry suggested I just google the words and see if they were attributed to an individual.  I was thrilled when I discovered they were by Angela Davis, an African American activist.

So I ensured I printed her name on the back of each card.

What I really like about the words is that they aren't about hoping or believing or thinking or wishing; they are about ACTING - taking action, doing stuff, behaving in a manner which...and I felt energised by that thought. The sense of persistence also resonated with me - you can't just do it once a year; it's about doing it   a l l   t h e   t i m e.

And then I just kept going and printed 50 drink coasters with the message as well - thinking wouldn't it be great to put your cup of coffee down by your computer on a positive message?

I get such joy out of these moments.

We were at a fabulous Conference yesterday and today - Communities in Control - and it felt right to share them with folk who work so hard to make our world a better place.