Sermon: Hope is the Thing with Feathers

What does hope mean for each of us and all of us in 2021? Today we explore where poets, spiritual thinkers and writers find hope. We ask if there are differing kinds of hope, if there is such a thing as a theology of hope, and what we mean by ‘active hope’. Together we will reflect and share what hope means to us, looking beyond this year towards the future we want to shape.

MEET OUR MINISTER

The Rev. Claire MacDonald

I am currently minister with Lewisham Unity in Catford South London. I trained at Harris Manchester College Oxford and at Heythrop College in London, where I studied the three Abrahamic Faiths in modernity and where I wrote my Masters dissertation on women ministers and dress. I am also a writer and an activist involved in climate change with a background in theatre. Despite having an international family, with a half Greek daughter and three grandchildren living in Barcelona, a Jewish husband from St Paul, Minnesota, and having lived for seven years in Washington DC, I do not know Paris. I live in hope – and hope is the subject of the service that I am creating for you this June.