About the Book
We all want to make sense of life--the good, the painful, the miraculous. Who are we? Why are we here? What should we do with our lives? How do we hold on to hope, in a world that is both beautiful and broken?
Through eight lyrical and reflective essays, one of today's most thoughtful spiritual writers Steven Garber explores the idea of the "proximate"--a word from the Latin "proximatus," to draw near. Garber invites us to draw near to the deepest realities of life and to see with greater clarity and compassion--recognizing what is true, right, and beautiful in the world, even as we see the suffering all around us.
Hints of Hope probes what it means to be human; to wrestle with the contradictions we all face in our marriages, in our workplaces, in our friendships and vocations. We all experience beauty and brokenness, wonder and despair, joy and sorrow. We live with disappointment and grief and pain . . . wanting more, expecting more, but never being completely fulfilled. Paradoxically, as we make peace with the proximate, our vision is expanded to see more clearly the glimmers of beauty and grace that thread their way through our lives. Garber suggests that those hints of hope are enough in this frail world of ours, "a world stretched taut between what is and what someday will be."
Written in memoir form, Hints of Hope weaves together decades of Garber's travels, teaching, and personal musings to offer a tapestry of wisdom on vocation, culture, faith, and hope. Readers of Wendell Berry, Parker Palmer, Marilyn McEntyre, Philip Yancey, and Frederick Buechner will find a rich, soul-nourishing feast within these pages.
About the Author :
Steven Garber has spent his life as a teacher of many people in many places, including his work as Senior Fellow for Vocation and the Common Good for the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, and the Economics of Mutuality Alliance. He was the founding principal for the Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation and Culture, and for several years, he served as the Professor of Marketplace Theology at Regent College. He continues his work as Senior Fellow for the Institute for Marketplace Transformation in Vancouver, BC. Garber is the author of several books, including Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good, and The Seamless Life: A Tapestry of Love and Learning, Worship and Work. Together with his wife Meg, he has enjoyed a long life among family, friends, and flowers in Virginia.
Review :
In Hints of Hope, the deeply respected author, Steven Garber, has written a moving, thoughtful set of meditations on what it means to live well in this painfully wounded world. I hardly know a book that is so very eloquent about the deepest distortions of our times and yet so lovely, inspiringly so, telling of friends he knows who are doing what they can, where they can, to live out the ways of God's Kingdom, bringing goodness and justice in very complicated settings. Travel with him from Bratislava to Mexico City, from urban Pittsburgh to rural Kenya, from the forming of his own youthful passions under the Sangre de Cristo mountains in the great American Southwest to lecturing on "Good Stories and Good Societies" at the Beijing Film Academy. Place and people, beauty and pain, stories and insights gleaned from the best literature and films, all pointing us to make sense of life in light of a grand and hopeful narrative-- but in and through everything, learning to make peace with the proximate. Implicated in the wounded world as we are, we dare not be idealistic or sentimental but instead must be honest about our pain and failures, even as we strive to make an honest difference. Read this unforgettable book -- slowly, I would suggest -- and take heart. -- Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds Books
"Steven Garber offers us a poignant account of the nearness of grace in real time-- the proximate. These are peace-making words; telling things as they are, while giving hope to the heart. Honest and effortless, Garber is at his most lucid and longing here, reenchanting us with reminders of the deep substance of real living." - Sandra McCracken, singer-songwriter
"We all need hints of hope as we navigate a world marked as often by seasons of sorrow and grief as by those of joy and gladness. Steven Garber profoundly offers us those hints in the pages of this book, one that may well be his magnum opus. Garber draws on his own story, his engagement with interesting, full-of-life people near and far, and his decades of deep reflection on the arts, philosophy, and theology to create Hints of Hope. It's a book that will accompany me again and again as I journey on in hope." - Jeff Crosby, author of The Language of the Soul and World of Wonders
