Hoping For More

"We tend to use words like miracle and mystery in the context of serendipity. In this frank and eloquent account of life transformed by cancer, Deanna Thompson explores these articles of faith as they are also wont to appear--on the hard edges of hope and the dark side of joy." --Krista Tippett, from the Foreword Hoping for More is a story of a young religion professor with a stage IV cancer diagnosis and a lousy prognosis for the future. Amid the grief and the grace of her fractured life, this theologian--who is also a wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend--searches for words adequate to express her faltering faith. More Anne Lamott meets Harold Kushner than the teller of a pious, God-saved-me-from-cancer tale, Thompson unpacks the messy realities that arise when faith and suffering collide. Told in shimmering prose, Hoping for More takes readers on an unsentimental journey through the valley of the shadow of cancer--beyond the predictable parameters of prayer, the church, even belief in life after death. What emerges is a novel approach to talking faith and accepting grace when hope is all you've got.

During the past 30 years, China has undergone extensive economic reform, replacing the government’s administration of enterprises with increasing levels of market-oriented enterprise autonomy. At the heart of the reform are changes in the employment relationship, where state control has been superceded by market relationships. These reforms have had far-reaching implications for many aspects of everyday life in Chinese society. This book appraises the impact of the economic reforms on the employment relationship and, in turn, examines the effects on individual workers and their families, including salaries, working conditions and satisfaction, job security and disparities based on location, gender, age, skill, position and migrant status. In particular, it focuses on how changes in the employment relationship have affected the livelihood strategies of households. It explores the changing human resource management practices and employment relations in different types of enterprises: including State-Owned Enterprises, Foreign-Owned Enterprises and Domestic Private Enterprises; throughout different industries, focusing especially on textiles, clothing and footwear and the electronics industry; and in different regions and cities within China (Beijing, Haerbin, Lanzhou, Hangzhou, Wuhan and Kunming). Overall, this book provides a detailed account of the everyday implications of economic reform for individuals and families in China.

'Here's Hoping'. The title is tongue-in-cheek. By saying “here's hoping” we usually fake hope because in reality we are not that hopeful. It is spoken without much confidence or hope at all and betrays uncertainty. We say it as we cast our wants and wishes, without much conviction, into the winds of fortune and the whims of the future, but without any sense of a guarantee for the desired result. “Here's hoping” speaks of longing that is not firing on all cylinders, of a dream or desire that is likely to stay that way, unrealized and unrequited. When we say it, we do not think “cross my heart and hope to die”. That kind of vigorous assurance and commitment is not usually prompting the phrase. It is less about crossing the heart and more about crossing the fingers. It is less about surety and more about good luck. To say “here's hoping” is to prepare oneself for potential disappointment. Ironically, it is more an expression of hopelessness than hope. This book gives the reasons we can say "Here's hoping" with assured anticipation and confidence

Everyone wants to be happy, and we all pursue happiness in different ways. Some people are thrill-seekers; others are homebodies. Some people are loners; others love big families or communities. Some people express things creatively; others consume what is created. Some sing; others listen to music. Whatever we find happiness in, we are united by our desire for work that matters and relationships that fulfil. As Christians, we often fall into the trap of basing our hopes on earthly things, even when we know they only make us happy for a short time. But how are we to experience happiness in this life? How do we avoid expecting too much of earthly things and being disappointed, or expecting too little and becoming cynics? In this book, recovering cynic Barnabas Piper helps us to throw off both the unrealistic expectations that end in disappointment and the guilty sense that Christians are not meant to have fun. He shows how having a clear view of the reality of the fall and the promise of redemption frees us to live a life that's grounded, hopeful and genuinely happy.

John D. Caputo has a long career as one of the preeminent postmodern philosophers in America. The author of such books as Radical Hermeneutics, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, and The Weakness of God, Caputo now reflects on his spiritual journey from a Catholic altar boy in 1950s Philadelphia to a philosopher after the death of God. Part spiritual autobiography, part homily on what he calls the “nihilism of grace,” Hoping Against Hope calls believers and nonbelievers alike to participate in the “praxis of the kingdom of God,” which Caputo says we must pursue “without why.” Caputo’s conversation partners in this volume include Lyotard, Derrida, and Hegel, but also earlier versions of himself: Jackie, a young altar boy, and Brother Paul, a novice in a religious order. Caputo traces his own journey from faith through skepticism to hope, after the “death of God.” In the end, Caputo doesn’t want to do away with religion; he wants to redeem religion and to reinvent religion for a postmodern time.

When Liddy's doctor tells her she is six months pregnant she is stunned. For Liddy is a few days off her fiftieth birthday, and hasn't had sex with her husband for at least five years. Shocked -- who wouldn't be? -- Liddy wonders how she is going to tell her grown-up family, who, it seems, need her more than ever. Laura, her eldest, a mother of three, longs for another baby. Miranda, her middle child, is desperate NOT to have a baby, even if it means losing her partner Richard. And Alex, her son, though happily living with his actor boyfriend Mungo, two dogs and various plants, is miserable in his dead-end job. And then there's Martin, her husband for over thirty years: will he be prepared to take on someone else's child? But the new baby, at first destined to split the family apart, draws it together in ways no one could have foreseen. Compassionate, knowing and humorous, HOPING FOR HOPE is a wonderful debut novel about a family going through a mid-life crisis and surviving -- scathed but stronger.

Born in 1948, Sheila Cornett grew up in a time when almost everyone’s father had served in the Second World War. Like many veterans of that conflict, her own father did not talk about his wartime experiences. Six decades later and after her mother’s death, Sheila discovered her father’s letters to his future wife, Marjory, written during the five and a half years he served with the Royal Canadian Artillery In Hoping to Hear from You Soon: Canadian War Letters, 1940–1945, Don Cornett describes what life is like for many servicemen in the Canadian Army at the time. From a training camp in Ontario to several more years of training in the UK, and then to the battlefields of northwest Europe, Don’s journey is very different from what he’d imagined on enlisting. He learns quickly that army life involves lengthy periods of idleness. Stationed in the UK, he complains that “month after month, we do next to nothing” and “our existence over here seems so utterly futile.” Writing with candour and insight, he critiques Canada’s political leadership and finds it wanting; discusses current affairs and the progress of the war; and expounds his views on bureaucracy within the army. After disembarking in Normandy, Don’s endurance is tested in new ways. Soon he is transferred to the Fourth Field Regiment to command a battery. He is mentioned in despatches. He tells Marjory “it’s pretty hard to find the time [to write] when we’re busy fighting.” Those days of idleness are long gone.