Overview

A moving exploration of the place of hope in the world today, drawing on agrarian principles In this series of meditations, Norman Wirzba recasts hope not as something people have, like a vaccine to prevent pain and trouble, but as something people do. Hope evaporates in conditions of abandonment and abuse. It grows in contexts of nurture and belonging. Hope ignites when people join in what Wendell Berry calls ""love's braided dance""—a commitment to care for one another and our world. Through personal narratives and historical examples, Wirzba explores what sustains hope and why it so often seems absent from our vision of the future. The vitality of hope, he maintains, depends on a collective commitment to care for the physical world (its soils and waters, plants and animals, homes and neighborhoods) and to promote the moral, aesthetic, and spiritual ideals that affirm life as good, beautiful, and sacred. Engaging with such contemporary topics as climate change, AI and social media, and the intensifying refugee crises and drawing on the wisdom of James Baldwin, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Martha Graham, and others, Wirzba offers a powerful argument for hope as a way of life in which people are intimately and practically joined with all the living.

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9780300285611

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Reviews

“[Wirzba] writes movingly.”—Michael Doe, Church Times Awarded the Virtues and Vocations Award sponsored by the University of Notre Dame “A work of compressed, concentrated moral energy, full of stories that make vital connections and show how radical transformation happens.”—Rowan Williams, 104th Archbishop of Canterbury “Peering straight into the heart of the darkness of our violent world, Norman Wirzba invites us into a riveting journey of hope. Love’s Braided Dance choreographs a movement for a sacred dance of forgiveness with love and courage.”—Makoto Fujimura, artist and author of Art and Faith: A Theology of Making “In this beautifully written but unassuming book, Norman Wirzba takes us, his readers, lovingly by the hand while urging us to do the same with one another. Amidst the clamour of a world on fire, Wirzba’s counsel is as wise as it is compassionate. May the seeds of hope it plants take root and grow!”—Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen

Author Information

Norman Wirzba is the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology at Duke Divinity School, as well as director of research at Duke University’s Office of Climate and Sustainability. His books include Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land and This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World. He lives in Hillsborough, NC.

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