The Grammar of Hope: What Sustains Us When the World Feels Broken - Letters to the Housed by Paul Asplund of Second Grace LA

Image by Nick Fewings @jannerboy62 of Unsplash

Published: Saturday, August 9, 2025 | By Paul Asplund | Second Grace LA

Why Do You Continue to Work to End Homelessness?

The question came at the end of a recent Hollywood Forward meeting, one of those moments when the leader asks each person to share what drives them. Around the circle, people offered thoughtful responses: compassion, justice, personal mission. When my turn came, my answer was simply:

"Hope."

I'd just returned from Minnesota, where 150 people gathered to celebrate my sister Sunnie's life. Sunnie was nine years older than me, and we hadn't known each other well during my childhood — I was still hanging onto our mother's apron strings when she began her adult life. But watching her friends share decades-old stories, I saw something profound: a woman who had lived with radical hope, keeping her heart open even when it wasn't to her advantage, believing things would get better right up until the end.

Her name itself embodied light, and the presence of her friends, many of whom have been in all our lives since the 1970s, testified to something deeper and richer than we as her siblings had known. Her life was hope made manifest in relationship, in the daily choice to keep loving people even when life didn't go according to plan. Their love for her poured out in every joke, anecdote, and in many tears.

The On Being of Hope

Sunnie died in January, as we were still recovering from the fires. January is a terrible time to be in Minnesota so the family agreed to meet on July 28, (her birthday) to celebrate. In May, I started Krista Tippett's seven-week hope course from the On Being podcast. The On Being podcast has been a touchstone in my spiritual life for over twenty years. I downloaded the guide and answered the questions, then listened each week while 7 great teachers, all of whom I knew from earlier On Being podcasts, talk about hope.

(On Being has always understood that the conversations we need aren't happening in our polarized public discourse. The podcast started within weeks of the 9/11 attacks and she dared to bring Muslim clerics onto her show. She remains a very brave human being and creates space for what she calls 'deep thinking and moral imagination to renew inner and outer life.' Thanks to her work, millions of us have learned from people who teach ways of seeing and becoming that point toward the world we want to inhabit. If you don't already listen, it's time.)

The hope exercise helped to pull me out of that dark place and reminded me, once again, of what she's talked about for decades, that hope is not wishful thinking or naive optimism, but "muscular hope" — hope that looks reality in the face and refuses to accept that things have to be this way. Hope as orientation, practice, and muscle that can be strengthened.

This couldn't have come at a better time, frankly. My family was grieving our loss, and I have been struggling with the chaos imposed on all of us by this current administration. So many of my friends are in pain, so many of the people we serve live in a fear I will never know. I'm not easily overwhelmed but I was getting numb from the constant onslaught of negative messaging. I do have some experience turning grief and pain into love and understanding, but it was about half way through that I had a breakthrough, in the section led by Joanna Macy. Tears I had been holding onto for months finally came. The gifts of my current situation would be a new understanding. A new way to frame my experience as well as a confirmation that 'love as a verb,' actualizing the most powerful force in the universe, would continue to transform me.

Here is some of what I discovered while going through the thought exercises and journaling my experiences. I've organized them roughly by how I worked through them, essentially one for each of the episodes, then some final thoughts. If you choose to take this journey yourself (and I hope you do) I hope these will be shared experiences and that at least one of them will break you open just a little bit further. If you want to read the answers I wrote to each questions, you can find them at the end of this article. I can't wait to hear about your experiences.

Imagination as the Engine of Change

adrienne maree brown, whose influential work includes Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism, anchors the series with a fundamental insight: we are shaping futures we have not yet experienced. As brown puts it, we're often "living inside of imaginations that other people told us were true."

This hits deep for those of us working on the streets. When I look at someone experiencing homelessness, I'm engaged in what brown calls an "imagination battle."

The dominant narrative says this person is broken, dangerous, beyond help. But I've learned to imagine unlimited potential — not what I see in that moment of crisis, but what becomes possible when someone feels wanted back in community.

brown's concept of "emergent strategy" offers a different way of thinking about change itself. Rather than top-down transformation, emergence recognizes how small actions and connections create complex systems. This approach emphasizes "critical connections over critical mass," as brown describes it.

I've seen this emergence in action. I've written about it at length. At Lava Mae, our super volunteer program wasn't planned — it emerged when former guests spontaneously began helping with setup and cleanup. What started as one or two people became a crew of super volunteers leading events that served over 400 people. When we recognized this organic development and built structure around it, we weren't implementing a program; we were honoring emergence.

Writing as a Practice of Hope

Poet Naomi Shihab Nye, whose father was a Palestinian refugee and whose work has been a bridge between cultures, teaches writing as companionship to hope. She offers a radical reframe: writing isn't about producing content but about getting into conversation with yourself. As Nye explains it, writing lets you meet the different selves inside you and "find some gracious way to have a community in there, inside."

Her famous poem "Kindness" was born from profound loss during her honeymoon in Colombia, when someone on their bus was killed and a stranger showed them unexpected compassion. The poem teaches that before we can truly understand kindness, we must know sorrow as equally deep. In my own journey, my deepest shame was transformed into the tools I use every day to help others.

When I journal now, I'm in conversation with all these selves — the one who experienced homelessness, the one who got help, the one who found purpose in this work, the one who both grieves and celebrates Sunnie. I have experienced many different orientations to despair and hope, but my best self knows that hope isn't a feeling but a practice, a choice to keep investing in people and possibilities.

Speaking Hope into Being

Ocean Vuong, the Vietnamese-American poet whose work chronicles survival and transformation, reminds us that "the future is in your mouth." Language isn't neutral; it actively creates the world we inhabit. When we rely on metaphors of violence and war — even in our advocacy work — we reinforce the very mindset we're trying to change.

I've learned to practice this in conversation. When I stopped using war metaphors about "fighting homelessness," or being on the "front lines" and started talking about "ending homelessness," and "standing with people who are suffering," the conversation shifted from battle to possibility. When I say "unhoused neighbors" instead of "the homeless," people become individuals with stories.

The Love on the Other Side of Pain

Buddhist teacher and environmental activist Joanna Macy brings perhaps the most crucial insight: our pain for the world reveals our love for it. She challenges the notion that hope requires protecting ourselves from difficult realities. Instead, Macy argues, when we can stay present with pain and keep breathing, it transforms.

I understand this viscerally. It is everything of value I know and believe, "my pain for the world reveals my love for it."

All the times I cried and despaired for the suffering around me now make sense.

I had been stuck in the comfortable belief that good intentions and hard work would be enough. But the love on the other side of pain is a fiercer commitment to honoring every life I encounter. The grief over Sunnie's death has become deeper appreciation for how she taught me to keep my heart open.

This is muscular hope — not avoiding pain but letting it become fuel for sustained engagement with the world.

Living in Expanded Time

Joy Harjo, former U.S. Poet Laureate and member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, offers a different relationship with time itself. She speaks of living in "the whole of time" rather than the cramped present of crisis and deadline. Harjo suggests we need different tools to measure and move within time, just as we need specific instruments to measure electricity.

Harjo reminds us that justice sometimes takes seven generations to arrive, but remains inevitable. Her perspective encompasses vast story realms where different realities overlap and intersect.

I know I'm just a bridge, the grandson of immigrants, a son and brother, and the uncle to four amazing human beings. I have seen and done things that were unimaginable to my ancestors, and my descendants will live in a world beyond what I can see. But I have hope.

The Practice of Delight

Ross Gay, poet and community gardener, brings the final piece: the necessity of attending to what we love as fiercely as what we're fighting. As Gay puts it, "we forget to advocate for what we love," focusing more on opposition than on what we want to preserve and create.

Gay practices what he calls "delight radar," deliberately noticing small moments of unambiguous care and connection.

This isn't escapism; it's intelligence. Adult joy exists alongside suffering and loss, and this knowledge makes good things more vivid rather than less so.

I see it every time I have the privilege of working on the streets. I know the volunteers around me to be capable of deep love, hope, and connection. I'm witnessing the world I'm working toward — not as future possibility but as present reality, already happening, waiting to be recognized and amplified.

Hope as Daily Practice

What I've learned, both from these teachers and from ten years on the streets, is that hope isn't something you have; it's something you do. It's the choice to act as if the world you're working toward is already coming into being. It's what brown calls practicing things on purpose rather than by accident.

In recovery, we say we get a daily reprieve from our disease contingent on maintaining our spiritual condition. I think about ending homelessness the same way — "one day at a time to end homelessness." This isn't a permanent fix but a daily practice of creating conditions where people can thrive.

Like Sunnie, who kept her heart open even when it wasn't advantageous, I choose hope not because I'm guaranteed success but because hope itself is success.

Every time I speak to someone on the street as if they have unlimited potential, every time I act as if community is possible, every time I refuse to accept that things have to be this way — hope wins.

Macy reminds us that we don't need to make our love for the world dependent on its current health or future prospects. This moment, we're alive, and we can access that magic whenever we choose.

The Question That Remains

So I return the question to you: What compels you to stay, even in the face of the dire realities of our times? Is it hope, love, understanding, or fairness? What words do you use?

Because in the end, we are all engaged in what brown calls the imagination battle. We can accept the stories we've been told about scarcity and impossibility, or we can practice the muscular hope that refuses to believe suffering is permanent. We can speak and act to manifest the reality we want to inhabit.

The future, as Ocean Vuong reminds us, is in our mouths. What world are you speaking into being?

Resources

To learn more about the On Being Hope Portal, visit onbeing.org. For resources on ending homelessness, visit secondgrace.la and paulasplund.com.

Watch the full video discussion: The Grammar of Hope - Video

Support our work: Fuel Hope with Second Grace LA

Connect with us: https://linktr.ee/secondgracela

The Questions, answered: (lightly edited)

Prepare Inwardly with Krista Tippett

Right now, today, what is filling you with despair? And what is giving you hope?

Despair: 200+ people losing their housing every day. 2,000+ people died alone on the streets last year (and will again this year) because we didn’t do our jobs well enough. The system isn’t designed to end homelessness, only to manage it. Our country under seige. Our city under seige. My friends living in fear. Sunnie.

Hope: Things always get better, eventually. I’m not doing this alone. Community. Friends.

What is hope? Answer this question through the story of your life.

My parents’ hope for me to be better off than they were. The hope I found at church. The hope I found again in recovery. The hope I find in my work and in the people I meet. Shared vision, community, the realization of a dream. My life has been marked by hope at every stage, even when I was despairing, I held onto something, even if it seemed unrealistic. For years my ability to see hope was limited by my vision of myself. Once I learned how to remove myself, my needs from the equations I startd to experience hope as a vast realm of possibility. Realizing the ‘golden key’ Fox wrote about.

Who have been the "live human signposts" of muscular hope?

Ed, taught me most everything useful I know today. Doniece, revolutionized street-level services and invited me to use my lived experience. Sunnie, lived with radical openness and hope. Eduardo, wanted to spend the rest of his life helping people after spending the first part hurting them. The countless people I've met on the streets who get up every day who have nothing but still find ways to help each other. So many people who I’ve encountered who encourage me to be better, dream bigger, love more openly.

Put Your Hands on the Future with adrienne maree brown

Examine your orientation to the idea that imagination has real-world consequences.

I live this daily. When I speak to someone on the street, I imagine their unlimited potential - not what I see in that moment, but what's possible. I've watched imagination become reality: shower buses that didn't exist until Doniece imagined them, volunteer programs born from guests spontaneously helping each other, Second Grace LA emerging from my grief over Eduardo's death. My whole approach is to act as if the world where homelessness has ended is already coming into being.

Ponder emergence. Consider how this has found expression in your life and work.

The super volunteer program at Lava Mae - we never planned for former guests to return as volunteers, but when it happened organically, we recognized it and built structure around it. My own path from homelessness to this work wasn't strategic; it emerged from small actions, relationships, and readiness meeting opportunity. Even Eduardo's short time with us created ripples - his death catalyzed Second Grace LA. Critical connections, small steps have been powerful.

Write Things Down with Naomi Shihab Nye

Exchange words with the many selves inside you about hope.

26-year-old self: Hope is terrifying because it requires admitting I want to live. Recovery self: Hope is showing up one day at a time without guarantees. Professional self: Hope is the discipline of seeing potential in others when they can't see it themselves. Best self: Hope is love in action - not a feeling but a practice, a choice to keep investing in people and possibilities.

Find a word/phrase to use as an oar:

"One day at a time to end homelessness" - adapting the recovery principle to this work, recognizing that ending homelessness isn't a permanent fix but a daily practice of creating conditions where people can thrive.

Take Off the Shoes of Your Voice with Ocean Vuong

What happens when you alter your language?

I stopped using violent words like "fighting homelessness" and started talking about "ending homelessness," then conversation shifted from battle to possibility. I started to say "unhoused neighbors" instead of "the homeless," then people become individuals with stories. I speak of "housing people" rather than "getting them off the streets," then focus becomes what we're building toward, not what we're running from.

What does it mean to take off the shoes of your voice?

Entering each conversation with reverence for the person's humanity. It means lowering my voice when I talk about ending homelessness, speaking with the care every life deserves. It means choosing words that open not close, that invite not exclude, that honor not diminish. Asset framing, love not judgement, admiting I don’t know opens the possibilties around me.

Grieve and Love with Joanna Macy

What is the love on the other side of your pain?

The love on the other side of Sunnie's death is deeper appreciation for how she taught me to keep my heart open. The love on the other side of seeing so much suffering is the absolute certainty that every person deserves dignity, community, and hope. That my own life has held closely to this pattern.

What loss have you not quite acknowledged?

The loss of innocence about systems and institutions. I've had to grieve the belief that good intentions and enough funding would solve this crisis (only community can solve this crisis). But that grief has led to a more active hope - that relies on human relationships and community rather than top-down solutions.

Live in the Whole of Time with Joy Harjo

Summon your 200-year present:

The oldest person who held me was my great aunt Signe, born ~1900. The youngest I've held recently was my Milo, who will probably live to ~2100. That's 200 years of human experience. I’m just a bridge.

Practice Delight with Ross Gay

Give your curiosity over to practicing delight:

Waking up next to Raph. Satan sleeping on top of me. Our really comfy bed. Licorice Mint toothpaste. Showers. Good soap. Clean clothes. Coffee. California. Pasadena. Discovering music (anything by David Lang, or Arvo Pärt). Reading (anything by Bill Bryson). The birds constantly outside my office window (and Satan watching them intently). Rewarding work in the company of wonderful people. Writing. Witnessing people being kind to each other. Working in the garden, then sitting on the front porch to watch the life there. Waterlillies. The life around our fountain. All our friends.

Paul AsplundAugust 9, 2025Comment