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Hints of Hope: Essays on Making Peace with the Proximate
We all want to make sense of life—the good, the painful, the miraculous. Who are we? Why are we here? What should we do with our lives? How do we hold on to hope, in a world that is both beautiful and broken?
Through eight lyrical and reflective essays, one of today's most thoughtful spiritual writers Steven Garber explores the idea of the "proximate"—a word from the Latin "proximatus," to draw near. Garber invites us to draw near to the deepest realities of life and to see with greater clarity and compassion—recognizing what is true, right, and beautiful in the world, even as we see the suffering all around us.
Hints of Hope probes what it means to be human; to wrestle with the contradictions we all face in our marriages, in our workplaces, in our friendships and vocations. We all experience beauty and brokenness, wonder and despair, joy and sorrow. We live with disappointment and grief and pain . . . wanting more, expecting more, but never being completely fulfilled. Paradoxically, as we make peace with the proximate, our vision is expanded to see more clearly the glimmers of beauty and grace that thread their way through our lives. Garber suggests that those hints of hope are enough in this frail world of ours, "a world stretched taut between what is and what someday will be."
Written in memoir form, Hints of Hope weaves together decades of Garber's travels, teaching, and personal musings to offer a tapestry of wisdom on vocation, culture, faith, and hope. Readers of Wendell Berry, Parker Palmer, Marilyn McEntyre, Philip Yancey, and Frederick Buechner will find a rich, soul-nourishing feast within these pages.
Through eight lyrical and reflective essays, one of today's most thoughtful spiritual writers Steven Garber explores the idea of the "proximate"—a word from the Latin "proximatus," to draw near. Garber invites us to draw near to the deepest realities of life and to see with greater clarity and compassion—recognizing what is true, right, and beautiful in the world, even as we see the suffering all around us.
Hints of Hope probes what it means to be human; to wrestle with the contradictions we all face in our marriages, in our workplaces, in our friendships and vocations. We all experience beauty and brokenness, wonder and despair, joy and sorrow. We live with disappointment and grief and pain . . . wanting more, expecting more, but never being completely fulfilled. Paradoxically, as we make peace with the proximate, our vision is expanded to see more clearly the glimmers of beauty and grace that thread their way through our lives. Garber suggests that those hints of hope are enough in this frail world of ours, "a world stretched taut between what is and what someday will be."
Written in memoir form, Hints of Hope weaves together decades of Garber's travels, teaching, and personal musings to offer a tapestry of wisdom on vocation, culture, faith, and hope. Readers of Wendell Berry, Parker Palmer, Marilyn McEntyre, Philip Yancey, and Frederick Buechner will find a rich, soul-nourishing feast within these pages.
272 pages, Paperback
Published January 20, 2026
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April 30, 2026
Steven Garber, who was the speaker at my now nearly twelve years ago Covenant Seminary graduation, is also the author of one of my favorite books Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good. We all have favorite authors, those whose writing resonates deeply with us. Like James Dodson, who frequently has written on golf, Steven Garber is one of those authors for me, especially as he writes about vocation. When you read Garber’s books, it is like sitting with him over a cup of coffee (or for him, tea). His books are meant to be read slowly, so as to take all of the ideas in carefully.
Garber tells us that he wrote this book in hopes that we all will see more clearly the meaning of the world and our responsibility in it, a responsibility born of love that it is. He writes about “the proximate”, which gives us room to long for and yearn after what ought to be and what could be done.
Throughout, he shares many stories and conversations about people, locations, films, and books, considering important questions, such as:
• How do we live in a way that connects our deepest longings with our ordinary lives?
• Knowing what I know, what will I do?
• What do you love? What is it that matters most to you? What is it that is most important to you? What is it that is at the center of who you are, of why you are, and of what you are going to do with your life?
• Why do we work? What does our work mean?
• What is our responsibility? What in fact does it mean to be responsible? Can we do anything? Should we?
• What do you care about?
• Why do we see as we see? Why do we choose what we choose?
• Where have we come from? What is wrong with the world? Can it ever change? What will the future be? Wherever we are, whatever we believe, these are the questions of being human.
Themes that come up often in the book are metanarrative to narrative, the idea of responsibility, ordered and disordered loves, having eyes that see and ears to hear, the eyes of our heart, habits of the heart, needing to make peace with the proximate, what it is to be human, and to be a signpost.
The author tells us that a hint of hope is something we can all live with, and in fact we cannot live without it.
There is much to ponder on in this excellent book. Here are some of the quotes I found most helpful from the book:
• Vocations and the occupations that grow from them are mysterious, never neat and clean, for any of us.
• Hopes and dreams, longings that we wake up to and go to sleep with, keep us keeping on for the years of our lives, and yet at the end, there is still more to be done.
• Perhaps along the way our best work becomes a signpost of what might be, of what could be, of what should be—though in the end, they are only a signpost, and yet they are a signpost.
• Hope is hard, especially with more knowledge of what is and is not in the lives that are ours. Often, the farther we go, the harder it is to hope.
• Making peace with the proximate is the way we all have to live, if we are going to live, keeping our hearts alive to the meaning of our lives, and to the meaning of life.
• Always and everywhere virtues are habits of heart, the characteristic ways we think and say and do all day long in the push and shove of ordinary life for ordinary folk.
• Virtues direct us to who and why and what we should be.
• Only when we put into practice what we have heard will we understand what we have heard, because what we do with what we know is crucial for a good life.
• Always and everywhere, integral to knowing the truth is doing the truth.
• Most of the time the most ordinary work is the most important work.
• Wherever we are, unique as each one is, we are first of all, most deeply of all, people who long for meaning.
• What we care about is central to who we are, to our sense of self and of our place in society, the choices we make about anything and everything born of our answer to that question.
• To love and to be loved are the greatest of gifts.
• Learning to care about the right things in the right way is what a good life is all about—and when we miss, we miss the meaning of our lives, and of life.
• At the end of the day, we live for windows into what is, to what could be, and to what someday will be, signs as they are, foretastes as they will only be. Seeing them for what they are, and are not, is another way of making peace with the proximate.
• Vocation is at its heart about seeing ourselves implicated, for love’s sake, in the way things are and the way things should be.
• It is only if we see vocations as common grace for the common good will our cities and societies flourish.
• To know the world and still love the world is the most difficult of all vocations—and yet it is what it means to be human, fully and truly human. But to choose that will cost us, which is why, sometimes, there are tender tears.
• Something honest and true is worthy of being called a marriage, even if the marriage is never everything that the pretense of perfection promises—and if we have eyes that see, that is a gift.
• The stories of our lives are always stories of journeys, of a beginning and then an end—an end that we hope for, and at other times an end that we resist.
Garber tells us that he wrote this book in hopes that we all will see more clearly the meaning of the world and our responsibility in it, a responsibility born of love that it is. He writes about “the proximate”, which gives us room to long for and yearn after what ought to be and what could be done.
Throughout, he shares many stories and conversations about people, locations, films, and books, considering important questions, such as:
• How do we live in a way that connects our deepest longings with our ordinary lives?
• Knowing what I know, what will I do?
• What do you love? What is it that matters most to you? What is it that is most important to you? What is it that is at the center of who you are, of why you are, and of what you are going to do with your life?
• Why do we work? What does our work mean?
• What is our responsibility? What in fact does it mean to be responsible? Can we do anything? Should we?
• What do you care about?
• Why do we see as we see? Why do we choose what we choose?
• Where have we come from? What is wrong with the world? Can it ever change? What will the future be? Wherever we are, whatever we believe, these are the questions of being human.
Themes that come up often in the book are metanarrative to narrative, the idea of responsibility, ordered and disordered loves, having eyes that see and ears to hear, the eyes of our heart, habits of the heart, needing to make peace with the proximate, what it is to be human, and to be a signpost.
The author tells us that a hint of hope is something we can all live with, and in fact we cannot live without it.
There is much to ponder on in this excellent book. Here are some of the quotes I found most helpful from the book:
• Vocations and the occupations that grow from them are mysterious, never neat and clean, for any of us.
• Hopes and dreams, longings that we wake up to and go to sleep with, keep us keeping on for the years of our lives, and yet at the end, there is still more to be done.
• Perhaps along the way our best work becomes a signpost of what might be, of what could be, of what should be—though in the end, they are only a signpost, and yet they are a signpost.
• Hope is hard, especially with more knowledge of what is and is not in the lives that are ours. Often, the farther we go, the harder it is to hope.
• Making peace with the proximate is the way we all have to live, if we are going to live, keeping our hearts alive to the meaning of our lives, and to the meaning of life.
• Always and everywhere virtues are habits of heart, the characteristic ways we think and say and do all day long in the push and shove of ordinary life for ordinary folk.
• Virtues direct us to who and why and what we should be.
• Only when we put into practice what we have heard will we understand what we have heard, because what we do with what we know is crucial for a good life.
• Always and everywhere, integral to knowing the truth is doing the truth.
• Most of the time the most ordinary work is the most important work.
• Wherever we are, unique as each one is, we are first of all, most deeply of all, people who long for meaning.
• What we care about is central to who we are, to our sense of self and of our place in society, the choices we make about anything and everything born of our answer to that question.
• To love and to be loved are the greatest of gifts.
• Learning to care about the right things in the right way is what a good life is all about—and when we miss, we miss the meaning of our lives, and of life.
• At the end of the day, we live for windows into what is, to what could be, and to what someday will be, signs as they are, foretastes as they will only be. Seeing them for what they are, and are not, is another way of making peace with the proximate.
• Vocation is at its heart about seeing ourselves implicated, for love’s sake, in the way things are and the way things should be.
• It is only if we see vocations as common grace for the common good will our cities and societies flourish.
• To know the world and still love the world is the most difficult of all vocations—and yet it is what it means to be human, fully and truly human. But to choose that will cost us, which is why, sometimes, there are tender tears.
• Something honest and true is worthy of being called a marriage, even if the marriage is never everything that the pretense of perfection promises—and if we have eyes that see, that is a gift.
• The stories of our lives are always stories of journeys, of a beginning and then an end—an end that we hope for, and at other times an end that we resist.
May 5, 2026
Summary: How we might live with hope in a beautiful but broken world where even our best efforts realize only proximately our ideals.
As followers of Christ, we speak of our hope in Christ, of new life in a renewed creation. But that seems far away for many of us. In the lives we live now, we struggle with the disparity between the vision toward which we live and the present realities of living in a beautiful but broken world as beautiful but broken people. Whether we look at our marriages, our parenting, our work, our civic engagement, we find much that is good. And yet….
That “and yet” is what Steve Garber calls the proximate. Whatever good we experience in the various arenas of our lives pales before what we know things could be. Often, life is marked with failure and grief as well as joy and achievement. One of the big questions is how we might continue to live with hope and make our peace with the proximate. It is to this that Garber devotes the essays that make up this book. In the Introduction, he likens our lives to the seashells we find along a beach–all beautiful, but broken, all glorious ruins–and all seeking to make sense of our reason for being. Then in the following eight essays, he will reflect further, often coming back to the affections, the love on which our lives turn.
Garber begins with his own story, and that of his father, a plant researcher who focused on growing good, disease resistant cotton. And much good cotton was grown, yet plant diseases persist to this day. The proximate. Then Garber turns to travels through Slovakia, the writing of Vaclav Havel, and Jozef Luptak, who convened a society-wide music festival called Konvergencie. It represented an effort to curate the best of Slovak culture while many remained indifferent. The proximate. Finally, he turns to the Lord of the Rings and the amazing quest of Frodo and Sam, destroying the Ring of Power, witnessing the coronation of Aragorn, and cleansing the Shire. And yet there were wounds that only a journey to the Western lands could heal.
That’s one chapter, weaving several stories around the theme of “glimpses of hope.” Garber’s remaining chapters follow a similar pattern, mixing personal narrative, the stories of others, and reflections from literature around a theme. He weighs the question of telos, the end toward which we live, and how it shapes our praxis. In exploring our quest for meaning, he considers Douglas Copeland and his Life After God. Can we make sense of our lives apart from God?
Then follow several chapters on various aspects of what it is to love. He reflects on how, in Wendell Berry’s words, “it all turns on affection”–our families, our work, our economic life, our communal and political life. It is a question Augustine asks: “What do you love?” Then Garber goes on to consider how Hannah Arendt, Reinhold Niebuhr, Lesslie Newbigin, and Jean Bethke Elshtain answered the question. “Love in the Ruins” connects stories from around the world of those who loved amid the proximate. Finally, “A Long-loved Love” looks at love and the proximate in marriages, including Garber’s own.
The final chapters face both the wounds and scars we bear and our longing for something more. We follow Garber from Birmingham to Pittsburgh to the art studios of Makoto Fujimura, who demonstrates the art of kintsugi. Each story is one of fashioning beauty out of brokenness. Finally, he considers the something more for which we long. He tells an amazing story of the Tunyi family from Nagaland. This is a remote place bordering Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Myanmar. They are dedicated to cultivating the good for the sake of the kingdom. Their efforts range across education, healthcare, and politics, as signposts pointing to the something more. And to close the circle, Garber ends with Lewis and Tolkien.
Garber writes beautifully, evoking in the reader images, thoughts, and feelings as one reads. There is the ethos of Garber’s own life, and search for hope. Then we have the pathos of so many stories of those living hopefully while making peace with the proximate. Finally, there is also logos, as Garber in the company of great writers, invites us to consider our telos. Toward what end do we live and what do we love?
If I were to offer any critique, it would be that these reflections sometimes border on “stream of consciousness.” There are so many stories that sometimes, keeping track of Garber’s theme can be a challenge. It’s easy to get lost in his excellent prose and skilled storytelling!
So what this calls for is slow and attentive reading…and reflecting. But what that yields is so worth it. In a world that vacillates between unrealistic ideals and ideologies and deep disillusionment, living with hope in the proximate is good news. Garber sees beyond the “glittering images” to our beautiful and broken reality, and helps us live toward something more.
_______________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.
As followers of Christ, we speak of our hope in Christ, of new life in a renewed creation. But that seems far away for many of us. In the lives we live now, we struggle with the disparity between the vision toward which we live and the present realities of living in a beautiful but broken world as beautiful but broken people. Whether we look at our marriages, our parenting, our work, our civic engagement, we find much that is good. And yet….
That “and yet” is what Steve Garber calls the proximate. Whatever good we experience in the various arenas of our lives pales before what we know things could be. Often, life is marked with failure and grief as well as joy and achievement. One of the big questions is how we might continue to live with hope and make our peace with the proximate. It is to this that Garber devotes the essays that make up this book. In the Introduction, he likens our lives to the seashells we find along a beach–all beautiful, but broken, all glorious ruins–and all seeking to make sense of our reason for being. Then in the following eight essays, he will reflect further, often coming back to the affections, the love on which our lives turn.
Garber begins with his own story, and that of his father, a plant researcher who focused on growing good, disease resistant cotton. And much good cotton was grown, yet plant diseases persist to this day. The proximate. Then Garber turns to travels through Slovakia, the writing of Vaclav Havel, and Jozef Luptak, who convened a society-wide music festival called Konvergencie. It represented an effort to curate the best of Slovak culture while many remained indifferent. The proximate. Finally, he turns to the Lord of the Rings and the amazing quest of Frodo and Sam, destroying the Ring of Power, witnessing the coronation of Aragorn, and cleansing the Shire. And yet there were wounds that only a journey to the Western lands could heal.
That’s one chapter, weaving several stories around the theme of “glimpses of hope.” Garber’s remaining chapters follow a similar pattern, mixing personal narrative, the stories of others, and reflections from literature around a theme. He weighs the question of telos, the end toward which we live, and how it shapes our praxis. In exploring our quest for meaning, he considers Douglas Copeland and his Life After God. Can we make sense of our lives apart from God?
Then follow several chapters on various aspects of what it is to love. He reflects on how, in Wendell Berry’s words, “it all turns on affection”–our families, our work, our economic life, our communal and political life. It is a question Augustine asks: “What do you love?” Then Garber goes on to consider how Hannah Arendt, Reinhold Niebuhr, Lesslie Newbigin, and Jean Bethke Elshtain answered the question. “Love in the Ruins” connects stories from around the world of those who loved amid the proximate. Finally, “A Long-loved Love” looks at love and the proximate in marriages, including Garber’s own.
The final chapters face both the wounds and scars we bear and our longing for something more. We follow Garber from Birmingham to Pittsburgh to the art studios of Makoto Fujimura, who demonstrates the art of kintsugi. Each story is one of fashioning beauty out of brokenness. Finally, he considers the something more for which we long. He tells an amazing story of the Tunyi family from Nagaland. This is a remote place bordering Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Myanmar. They are dedicated to cultivating the good for the sake of the kingdom. Their efforts range across education, healthcare, and politics, as signposts pointing to the something more. And to close the circle, Garber ends with Lewis and Tolkien.
Garber writes beautifully, evoking in the reader images, thoughts, and feelings as one reads. There is the ethos of Garber’s own life, and search for hope. Then we have the pathos of so many stories of those living hopefully while making peace with the proximate. Finally, there is also logos, as Garber in the company of great writers, invites us to consider our telos. Toward what end do we live and what do we love?
If I were to offer any critique, it would be that these reflections sometimes border on “stream of consciousness.” There are so many stories that sometimes, keeping track of Garber’s theme can be a challenge. It’s easy to get lost in his excellent prose and skilled storytelling!
So what this calls for is slow and attentive reading…and reflecting. But what that yields is so worth it. In a world that vacillates between unrealistic ideals and ideologies and deep disillusionment, living with hope in the proximate is good news. Garber sees beyond the “glittering images” to our beautiful and broken reality, and helps us live toward something more.
_______________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.
May 3, 2026
3.5 stars. . .
“What we believe about what’s still to come affects how we live in and through the ordinary days of our lives. . . . There was a sure hope that someday, someday, all sad things will come untrue.” p260, 262.
“What we believe about what’s still to come affects how we live in and through the ordinary days of our lives. . . . There was a sure hope that someday, someday, all sad things will come untrue.” p260, 262.
February 2, 2026
“ Everything. All of life. All of learning. All of labor. From the most personal relationships to the most public responsibilities, our affections shape ourselves and our societies.”
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews