Welcome to H.O.P.E, Healing of Persons Exceptional

(H.O.P.E knows that all of us humans strive to be healthy and whole--a process called healing; all of us are persons and no two of us are alike--we're all exceptional....)

• HOPE has a long tradition and experience of helping people confronted by the unpleasant things life can throw at us find answers through hope--"the certainty that things can make sense, regardless of how they work out (Vaclav Havel)."

• In 1986, three years before he became president of the Republic of Czechoslovakia, Havel was asked, "Do you see a grain of hope anywhere in the 1980s?"

  He replied:

  Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation.

  Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.

  Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for  success, but rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more propitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is.

  Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

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(This page last updated 04/13/2007)