As a scholar in theology and a person who believes in a loving and creative life force at the centre of all things, I nevertheless respectfully place my perspective alongside those of others who may come from a totally different understanding of reality. Hope is, in itself, an act of faith – not, of course, faith which is necessarily religious. It can equally be what I would call a foundational expectation of joy. To live with hope is to be fully alive and to give up hope is the entry into death. Hope rises in the human spirit and challenges what is with the dream of what might be. I have had enough tough journeys in my own life to know that any superficial approach to the inviting of the dream of joy is an offence and a betrayal of those who enter the grave and costly struggles for universal hope. Hope is often hard-won. Its cost is sometimes life itself.