Helen Goh’s jalapeño and cheddar scones, a recipe from August 2021.
Credit score: @ac_brite/INSTAGRAM
On a extra optimistic word
As we method the top of a tumultuous yr, I appreciated the attractive and fittingly hopeful piece by David Leser [December 9]. Like Leser, I, too, hope that we grow to be higher stewards of the earth, that we see humanity in all, that we “drink from the effectively of Indigenous information” and that “impressed management” creates a “actually regenerative, round economic system”. It’s, nonetheless, not sitting on the couch and hoping that makes a distinction. It’s getting up off the sofa and doing one thing about it. Becoming a member of with different individuals with the identical hopes and goals and getting lively. Bringing within the change we need to see on the planet. As 2024 approaches, let’s select to convey extra of Joanna Macy’s “lively hope” and Christiana Figueres’ “cussed optimism” to the desk. Solely then would possibly our hopes be realised.
Amy Hiller
Kew, Vic
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Pretty to have David Leser’s thought-provoking, inspiring article on hope. Many people would agree together with his hope for peace and efficient local weather motion. I’d add ending poverty and rising social justice. However we every must do our utmost to assist obtain these hopes. So, by becoming a member of an area motion group you may learn the way. You additionally will really feel extra hopeful and even optimistic. That’s, stubbornly optimistic, because the profitable earlier local weather chief Christiana Figueres would put it.
Barbara Fraser
Burwood, Vic
My household have been devoted readers of The Age since a minimum of the Seventies – and an occasional letter author, for that matter. I have no idea the place we might be with out it. The considered “the opposite” each day paper in Melbourne being the one one out there fills me with absolute dread. That might be time to drag up the drawbridge and quit.
Nonetheless, all isn’t plain crusing with The Age, both. I actually should object most strongly to a part of the entrance cowl of Good Weekend. The thought bubble saying, “I hope for the demise of spiritual religion and certainty” was utterly unacceptable and should be referred to as out. I agree wholeheartedly that spiritual fundamentalism and its manifestations are abhorrent, however to say that the demise of spiritual religion is to be hoped for is manner past provocative. All world wide at this very time, in church buildings all over the place, persons are weekly lighting candles to mark the time of Creation. One among these 5 candles is the “hope” candle. Hope is a serious manifestation of the Christian religion and of the message of Christmas. Hope, like love itself, does no hurt. We might all do with a dramatic improve in love, in hope and, because the scripture has it, religion. I personally draw confidence from my religion in God, as I see Him/Her, and hope that that confidence isn’t solely misplaced. Even when it’s that hope provides me a motive to rise up every morning. As Gandalf is made to say within the third Lord of the Rings movie, “It is just a faint hope”, or phrases to that impact. With out hope, we’re in spite of everything, hope-less!
Colin Youl
Montrose, Vic
Editor’s word: Thanks on your letter. The quotes on the duvet of Good Weekend on December 9, together with the one you seek advice from, had been a sequence of responses to a Fb request by the author of the story, who had requested his followers to publish their hopes for the yr. These responses don’t mirror the opinion of Good Weekend, The Age or the author of the story – they had been used for example the various and assorted hopes individuals had on the time of writing.
David Leser’s article was informative and uplifting. Hope is just a bit phrase that’s repeatedly bandied about in dialog, flippantly and, in additional determined conditions, severely. Relying on what we’re dealing with, hope could be on the far horizon or one thing close by. We cling to it after we’re dealing with dire circumstances, searching for solutions and a few consolation from life’s large traumas. And when hope is tough to carry on to, we should tighten our grip as a result of after we lose hope, now we have nothing. In our hurting world, by no means has it been extra necessary to have hope.
Judith Caine
Donvale, Vic
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