Episode 223: Making Friends with Change | A Conversation About Hope
“There is hope in the certainty that things do change,” writes Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg. But there is also real anxiety in the certainty that things do change. Change is the force that pushes us forward, without asking whether we want to move. Can the way we think about and navigate life’s transitions improve our experience of them? In Episode 223, Susan and Cynthia are back for Season 10 with a conversation about the relentless nature of change, and what it might mean to lean into hope.
Notes & Quotes:
Sharon Salzberg on Facebook
At Last She Said It: Honest Conversations about Faith, Church, and Everything In Between, by Susan Hinckley and Cynthia Winward
Are You a Cynic, Optimist, or Skeptic? Dr. Jamil Zaki Shares Which Type is Happiest, We Can Do Hard Things podcast, Episode 410
Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power, by Rebecca Solnit
The Alchemy of the Broken Open Heart, by Parker J. Palmer, 5/09/2025
How to Be Grateful in Every Moment (But Not for Everything), Krista Tippet with David Steindl-Rast, On Being podcast, 4/09/2020
Kabbalah and Everyday Mysticism, Krista Tippet with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, On Being podcast, 3/21/2019
A Faith of Many Rooms: Inhabiting a More Spacious Christianity, by Debie Thomas
Rabbi Steve Leder: Don’t Come Out Empty Handed, Everything Happens with Kate Bowler, Season 10 Episode 07
What is Prayer and How to Begin, Krista Tippet with Roberta Bondi, On Being Podcast, 05/22/2025
Are You Willing to Be Changed, by Phillip Moffitt, Dharma Wisdom
Transcend and Include, Center for Action and Contemplation, 12/07/2016
Out of Your Mind, by Alan W. Watts
The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, by Richard Rohr
Sharon Salzberg on Facebook
Man Plans, God Does Standup, by Marty Kaplan, On Being blog, 10/11/2016
“There is hope in the certainty that things do change.” —Sharon Salzberg
"Change is always pushing us forward, insisting we embrace the thing we haven’t met.” —Susan Hinckley, p. 240
“Optimism is the belief that the future will turn out well. And optimists tend to be pretty happy, but they can also be a little bit complacent. So if you think a bright future is on its way, you can kind of just sit on your couch and wait for its arrival. Hope is different. Hope is the idea that the future could turn out well, or at least better than it is, but that we don't know.” —Dr. Jamil Zaki
“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency….. To hope is to give yourself to the future—and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.” —Rebecca Solnit
“When grief became my constant companion I learned to eventually welcome her. To lean into all the big feelings of sorrow. To stop shoving grief away and pretending everything would eventually get better with just more time.It’s okay to not be okay. Grief wouldn’t be my constant companion but she was a longtime companion.” —Cynthia Winward, p. 229
“Cynicism and idealism sound like polar opposites, but they have the same effect: they take us out of the action and leave us on the sidelines of history. Our calling is to keep standing and acting in the tragic gap where history is made, putting one foot in front of the other in the long, slow walk toward a better world.” —Parker J. Palmer
“Each catastrophe is also an opportunity.” —David Steindl-Rast
“When I take all of it in, the darkness and the light—take it in mindfully, with full focus on the here and now—it helps make my heart supple enough to absorb and transform whatever life may bring.” —Parker J. Palmer
“What can I do to redeem even this? This terrible thing, whatever it is. What is holy in it? I will keep working at it, and that is how I can free myself from it.” —Rabbi Lawrence Kushner
“Sometimes the spiritual life is about little more than encountering a God who feels mysterious, nameless, opaque, bewildering, and frightening and then hanging on for dear life. Sometimes the whole of Christianity comes down to saying, ‘There’s so much I can’t wrap my head around, but I know that there’s a blessing in this mess somewhere. I will hang on until I find it.’” —Debie Thomas, p. 165
“If you have to go through hell, don’t come out empty handed.” —Rabbi Steve Leder
“This was the way in which I came to know that everything in my life belongs, that every part of my story has made important contributions to who I am.” —David Benner
“No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen.” —Alan Watts
“The need for willingness is counterintuitive for almost all Western people, especially the strong and the educated, who think that spiritual things can be achieved by intellect and will power. In fact, it will demand a severe detachment [your prayer ‘open my hands’] from what you think is your intellect, and you cannot get there by trying harder. This is a difficult lesson for most people, which is why Jesus called it the ‘narrow path that few would walk upon.’” (Matthew 7:14) —Richard Rohr, p. 64
“What is happening in front of us is not the end of the story, it is just what we can see.” —Sharon Salzberg
“Man plans, God does standup.” —Marty Kaplan