Sunday Service

What is hope? It is a hunch that the overwhelming brutality of facts that oppress and repress is not the last word. It is a suspicion that reality is more complex than realism wants us to believe and that the frontiers of the possible are not determined by the limits of the actual.

~ Rubem A. Alves

Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It’s the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand.

~ Rebecca Solnit

Hope causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in [all of us.] Those who hope…can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it.

~ Jürgen Moltmann

Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.

~Author Unknown

People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider's webs. It's not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of the cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go.

~ Matthew@CrowsFault

As usual Hope is a woman

herding her children

around her,

all she retains of who

she was…

Hope rises, and she puts on her same

unfashionable threadbare cloak

and, penniless, she flings herself

against the cold, polished, protective chain mail

of the very powerful…

~ Alice Walker

Hope has holes in its pockets. It leaves little crumb trails so that we, when anxious, can follow it.

Hope’s secret: it doesn’t know the destination— it knows only that all roads begin with one foot in front of the other.

~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Hope begins in the dark, it’s a stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work!

~ Anne Lamott

Hope is a practice, an act you can do even as you mourn, or regret, or dread. Hope is an act of trust, regardless of what the future may hold, trust in the gravity of grace, the life that sings in all things… Hope is not wishing but acting. Birthing. Planting. Getting up.

~ Steve Garnaas-Holmes

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Choosing Hope’)

December 4, 2025

This list of questions is an aid for deep reflection. How you answer them is often less important than the journey they take you on.

So, read through the list of questions 2-3 times until one question sticks out for you and captures your attention, or as some faith traditions say, until one of the questions “shimmers.” Or as we like to say, “Read over them until one of the questions picks you.”

Then reflect on that question using one or all of these questions:

●       What is going on in my life right now that makes this question so pronounced for me?

●       What might my inner wisdom be trying to say to me through this question?

●       How might this question be trying to wake me up or get me to realize something through this question?

●       How might Life or my inner wisdom be trying to offer me a word of comfort or challenge through this question?

1. Was your childhood home full of optimism or pessimism? How has wrestling with that legacy shaped who you are today?

2. Who is hope for you? Whose way of being in the world helps you believe that tomorrow will be better? What small strategy might you employ to keep their hope front and center for you?

3. What might it mean for you to “be hope”? It’s one thing to believe in hope; it’s quite another to become it.

4. If hope could speak, what do you think it would most want to say to you right now?

5. If you could magically infect someone with hope, who would it be and why?

6. Might life be inviting you to bring an old hope back to life?

7. What is your cynicism protecting you from?

8. We all carry within ourselves the hopes and fears of those we’ve loved. Is it time to put one of those down so you can make your path your own?

9. How might surrendering an ego-driven hope for the future enable you to live more fully (and joyfully) in the here and now?

10. What would happen if your hopes suddenly grew one size larger?

11. Who carries hope for you when the weariness of the world wears you down? Who needs you to carry hope for them?

12. What dreams have you silenced in yourself because of cynicism?

13. What’s your question? Your question may not be listed above. As always, if the above questions don't include what life is asking from you, spend the month listening to your days to find it.  

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Choosing Hope')

Faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in [all of us]. Those who hope… can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. [It] means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.”

- Jürgen Moltmann, Theologian

It’s not always easy to hear well this time of year, especially when it comes to hope. The dominant messages are about hope offering us calm: “The light will return.” “A new day is on its way.” “Justice and joy are growing in the womb and will soon be born.” Hope, from this point of view, is a voice that reassures. It’s a welcomed whisper that says, “Yes, the sky may be dark now. Yes, the road you’re on at this moment may be hard. But trust me, just over that horizon, there’s a new world waiting for us all.”

This soothing message comes to us as a gift. During dark days, we all get tired. The fruits of our efforts are hard to see. The cold seems to have set in deep. We feel small, and alone. So, the promise that things will change offers us relief. We are released from the burden of believing that “it is all up to me” or that it all must be solved now.

It’s a beautiful and needed message. But, as Moltmann and others remind us, it’s also only half of what hope is trying to say. Hope doesn’t just whisper “It will be different,” it also shouts, “It should be different” and “It can be different.” Yes, it speaks soothing words about trusting and waiting, but it also takes the form of a holy impatience that declares, “Enough is enough. The time is now!”

In other words, hope doesn’t just promise us that change will come in the future; it also changes who we are in the present. When we believe that a new day is possible, we don’t just sit down and wait to see what happens. We get up and go out to meet the light. When hope convinces us that there are unseen forces working for the good, we begin to look around more closely, and in doing so, we notice that darkness and pain are not all that is there. When hope’s holy impatience gets into our bones, we start acting as if we are worthy of that new day now. Which in turn changes others by convincing them that we all have waited long enough.

Bottom line: listening to hope, makes you dangerous, not just soothed! It doesn’t relieve us of duty as much as it reminds us that reality is more complex, unruly and open to change than the pompously powerful want us to believe. Yes, hope reassures, but it also emboldens. It doesn’t just offer us a promise; it gives us a push.

But all of this only happens if we listen fully. So maybe the most important question this month is: “Are we listening to everything that hope has to say?”

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Choosing Hope')

Ask Them About Hope

One of the best ways to explore our monthly themes is to have conversations about them with people who are

close to you. It’s also a great way to deepen our relationships! Below is a list of questions to guide your conversation. Be sure to let your conversation partner know in advance that this won’t be a typical conversation.

Remember to also answer the questions yourself as they are meant to support a conversation, not just a time of

quizzing them. Come to your group ready to share what surprised you about the conversation and what gift or

insight it gave you.

Hope Questions:

●       Was your childhood home full of optimism or pessimism? How has wrestling with that legacy shaped who you are today?

●       George Carlin famously said, “If you scratch a cynic, you will find a disappointed idealist.” Do you feel like this applies to you in some way?

●       Has hope ever broken your heart?

●       Do you have a story of someone helping you make your way out of the dark?

●       If you could magically infect someone with hope, who would it be and why?

●       Do you have an old hope you want to bring back to life?

●     What would happen if your hopes suddenly grew one size larger?

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Choosing Hope’)

Spread Some Positive Gossip

Whereas our first exercise option asks us to spread our stories, this exercise invites us to spread some gossip. But in a way we don’t regularly do.

Dr. Jamil Zaki researches hope and cynicism. He has identified numerous strategies to help us move from hopelessness and pessimistic views to hope and optimistic views of life and others. One of the most effective of

those strategies is what he calls “positive gossip.” It’s all about publicly pointing out good deeds, spreading positive tales about strangers you’ve encountered and lifting up underrecognized admirable qualities of those close to you. Zaki says this simple habit radically alters not only our attention but others’ as well, decreasing our innate negativity bias and expanding the ability of all of us to be open to the goodness that surrounds us. By altering our attentional patterns, this “good gossip” literally causes us to live in a more hopeful world.   

So, here’s your challenge: For one week, keep an eye out over the course of your day for one example of being touched by the kindness, generosity, or goodness of another person. And then find a different person to “gossip” about it to. Along the way, notice how others react to your positive gossip. Do they welcome it or does it throw them off? Also notice your own reactions. Does sharing positive gossip feel natural or awkward? And, at the end of the week, see if you notice any trends or shifts, in you or the circles in which you share your anti-cynical scuttlebutt.

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Choosing Hope')

When eating a fruit, think of the person who planted the tree.

~ Vietnamese Proverb

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it, is like wrapping a present and not giving it.

~ William Arthur Ward

We should be especially grateful for having to deal with annoying people and difficult situations, because without them we would have nothing to work with. Without them, how could we practice patience, exertion, mindfulness, loving-kindness or compassion? It is by dealing with such challenges that we grow and develop. So we should be very grateful to have them.

~ Judy Lief

If you find yourself… hearing, again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that says… all you love will turn to dust… Do not raise your small voice against it… Instead, curl your toes into the grass… Walk through the garden's dormant splendor. Say only, thank you.

~ Ross Gay

You will lose everything. Your money, your power, your fame, your success, perhaps even your memories… But that which will be lost has not yet been lost, and realizing this is the key to unspeakable joy… Impermanence has already rendered everything and everyone around you so deeply holy and significant and worthy of your heartbreaking gratitude. Loss has already transfigured your life into an altar.

~ Jeff Foster

When you are with someone who has developed the habit of gratitude, you SO want what they have. They are not grasping for more. They are savoring, shaking their heads slightly with the quietest wonder.

~ Anne Lamott

You wander from room to room, hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck!

~ Rumi

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.

~ Melody Beattie

With gratitude, optimism is sustainable. If you can find something to be grateful for then you can find something to look forward to, and you can carry on.

~ Michael J. Fox

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Nurturing Gratitude')

For many, meditation and compassion go hand in hand. By setting aside time to direct our attention and thoughts in very intentional ways, meditation re-wires our brain so we are able to experience the world and interact with others differently. The Buddhist practice of metta meditation (also known as loving-kindness meditation) is one of the most well-known compassion meditative practices, but there are so many other compassion-oriented guided meditations out there.

To honor this long-established connection between compassion and meditation, you are invited to establish a daily compassion meditation practice for a week (or two) this month. To help you explore the many types of meditations out there, we’ve put together a list of diverse guided meditations to try. You can find that list by following this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13QPwt93L89fvmbTTfBAOXEm4B4XYWCnHkjSdqGGoVjM/edit?usp=sharing

You do not have to do all the meditations on the list. Just pick the ones that interest you most.  

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Cultivating Compassion')