Review by Cara Wheatley-McGrain
Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy is a compelling and transformative read.
At its heart Active Hope is a call to action!
How can we respond to the global ecological crisis and socio-political challenges of our time without succumbing to overwhelm, fear and hopelessness?
We are invited to acknowledge our pain, not as a weakness, but as evidence of our deep care for the Earth.
Key Themes
Active Hope is not about passive optimism.
Joanna and Chris emphasise the importance of acknowledging the gravity of our current context, whilst remaining empowered to take meaningful action from a place of hope.
The book is structured around the necessary shift from a world of Business as Usual (which is right now unraveling like a dystopian film before our eyes) to the space of “The Great Turning.
The Great Turning represents the necessary shift from a growth capitalist society to a life-sustaining interconnected approach to human life on planet earth.
We are presented with a crossroads, where our actions today will determine whether we descend into ecological collapse or transition toward a sustainable future.
The book is divided into three key parts:
- The Nature of Hope: What does hope means in a time of crisis, distinguishing it from wishful thinking. Hope is not dependent on the belief that everything will be fine but rather on the commitment to doing what we can.
- The Spiral of the Work That Reconnects: Joanna explores deep ecology, encouraging us to reconnect to both our natural inner resources and the earth. This spiral entails:
- Coming from gratitude, Honoring our pain for the world, Seeing with new eyes
- Going forth with renewed energy and purpose.
- The Practice of Active Hope: Joanna and Chris provide a rich seam of practical tools and exercises to inspire us to face the challenges of environmental degradation, climate change, social injustice, with resilience and determination.
This really is an extraordinary book, so much so that I found myself reading it aloud to my husband on more than one occasion.
Active Hope draws on the interdependent systems thinking of Eastern Philosophy.
Joanna supports us to see ourselves as part of a broader web of life and timescape, connected not only to each other but to the precious ecosystems we inhabit.
I love the system’s perspective that challenges the notion that our individual actions are insignificant, moving us to a deeper sense that our personal change/actions ripple outwards with the potential to create larger societal and environmental shifts. And I experienced goosebumps reading the passages around the Shambala Warrior. Other highlights include: Letter from our future self, Ancestors as our allies. Thinking in deep time, letter from the seventh generation.
We are each familiar with the experience of feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of global challenges. I recently watched a BBC news report which featured a Brazilian firefighter with tears in his eyes as he called on the world to support the Amazon rainforest, which he called the lungs of the world.
My personal love for this book is as a repository of hope, community and connection with the natural world, even in the midst of despair. Active Hope stands out for its practical nature.The exercises, reflective questions, and case studies offer a toolkit for personal and collective transformation. Encouraging mindfulness, emotional resilience, creating a sense of agency and possibility.
I left my second reading of Active Hope feeling that how we are maybe as important as what we do.
Conclusion
The book’s core message. Hope is something we do, not something we have – a rallying call to transform our fear and grief into the fuel for change.
For environmentalists, activists, and spiritual seekers alike, Active Hope serves as both a philosophical treatise and a practical handbook for cultivating resilience, compassion, and, above all, hope in action.
