Almost Everything: Notes on Hope

by Anne Lamott

Love has bridged the high-rises of despair we were about to fall between. Love has been a penlight in the blackest, bleakest nights. Love has been a wild animal, a poultice, a dinghy, a coat. Love is why we have hope.

Fear, against all odds, leads to community, to bravery and right action, and these give us hope.

T. S. Eliot wrote, “Teach us to care and not to care / Teach us to sit still.” We long for this, and yet we check our smartphones every ten minutes for news, texts, distraction.

But truth is too wild and complex to be contained in one answer, so Jesus often responded with a question or a parable.