[I mistakenly posted this under book discussions and am restarting it here.]

For me it is a challenge to believe that I can make a difference in a life lived ethically in the face of witnessing indignities to those we might pass while going about our daily tasks and while knowing that enormous atrocities are being carried out on the other side of the world. Be it be rudeness to a supermarket cashier or genocide in Darfur, I need to attend to nurturing the hope that my words and actions can contribute to the making of a more humane world.

I like the late Rev. William Sloane Coffin's statement on hope:

"I think that hope reflects the state of our soul rather than the circumstances that surround our lives. Hope is not the equivalent of optimism. Its opposite is not pessimism but despair. So I'm always hopeful. Hope is about keeping the faith despite the evidence so that the evidence has a chance of changing. As I wrote in my book Credo, hope criticizes what is, hopelessness rationalizes it. Hope resists, hopelessness adapts."

How do you think of hope and what role does it play in your life?