Hope Leans Forward: Braving Your Way toward Simplicity, Awakening, and Peace
Reviewed by Lauren Brownlee
November 1, 2022
By Valerie Brown. Broadleaf Books, 2022. 275 pages. $26.99/hardcover; $22.99/eBook.
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I’ve always loved the sentiment behind the saying “People may forget what you said or did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”
Two years ago, I participated in a Pendle Hill retreat with author Valerie Brown, and although I don’t remember the specific topics or activities from the retreat, I absolutely remember that it made me feel ready to take on the year ahead. I got the same feeling of empowerment from Hope Leans Forward: Braving Your Way toward Simplicity, Awakening, and Peace.
Valerie Brown is a Quaker Buddhist and uses the wisdom of each of those spiritual traditions to share significant wisdom in every page of this book.
Each chapter explores one of Buddhism’s Seven Factors of Awakening and ends with a mindfulness practice and a list of Quaker-inspired queries.
The combination is powerful and leads readers on a journey of meaningful insights and practical tools.
Hope Leans Forward provides a window into the lessons that Brown has learned through pain and grace and that she shares in her professional life as a teacher, coach, and spiritual guide.
Hope Leans Forward provides a window into the lessons that Brown has learned through pain and grace and that she shares in her professional life as a teacher, coach, and spiritual guide.
Over the course of the book, she describes how she went from being a lawyer-lobbyist who was obsessed with productivity and achievement
to someone who is able to center love and community in her life.
She also describes her path as she moved through and grew from the heartache of divorce. She shares that her work now includes encouraging people “to release the idea that we will be perfect, and to move at a human pace: the speed of trust” and to accept that “more often than not, community is about conflict and about how we together navigate it.” Her reflections about love particularly resonated with me, including that “risk is a part of love” and that “[l]ove begins with me, with choosing love, no matter what.” I appreciated that she consistently acknowledges the complexities of the wisdom she is sharing. Brown’s noting that we are all—herself included—works in progress inspires me to embrace the journey rather than seek to discover or do the “right” thing.
Brown does offer some next steps to try, wherever readers are in their journey.
Brown does offer some next steps to try, wherever readers are in their journey.
Each chapter includes practical tools for cultivating hope.
Some of the suggestions and models are very personal, such as Brown’s daily practice of asking herself, “‘Am I rationalizing, ignoring, sidestepping a voice that is struggling to be heard, calling me to be more generous, more loving, braver?’” Others include more common mindfulness exercises, such as a noticing practice, a pausing practice, and body practice.
The queries she shares at the end of each chapter are excellent for individual and collective reflection, and even include a description of clearness committees. I was thrilled to see that the queries at the end of one chapter come from my local monthly meeting. The mindfulness practices and queries will help readers to apply and sustain the lessons from the book.
At its core Hope Leans Forward is indeed a meditation on hope: its significance and how to cultivate it. Brown describes hope as “the resolve to live with a generous heart, to dedicate and rededicate myself, to awaken my soul’s voice at this sacred time of global disruption.”
At its core Hope Leans Forward is indeed a meditation on hope: its significance and how to cultivate it. Brown describes hope as “the resolve to live with a generous heart, to dedicate and rededicate myself, to awaken my soul’s voice at this sacred time of global disruption.”
She describes joy, belonging, and courage as the ingredients for a life filled with hope.
She makes clear that hope carries with it the potential for disappointment and suffering, while also using the stories of her own life and the lives of those she admires to paint a clear picture of why hope is worth the leap of faith it requires. Early in the book, Brown writes that she hopes readers will “let [Hope Leans Forward] surprise, inspire, and warm your heart.”
It set mine on fire.
Lauren Brownlee is a member of Bethesda (Md.) Meeting, where she serves on the Peace and Social Justice Committee.
Lauren Brownlee is a member of Bethesda (Md.) Meeting, where she serves on the Peace and Social Justice Committee.
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Hope Leans Forward: Braving Your Way toward Simplicity, Awakening, and Peace Kindle Edition
by Valerie Brown (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
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Find spiritual insight for developing courage and meeting life's broken-open, pulled-apart times for anyone seeking hope.
Daily we are asked to move toward bravery, to stretch in the direction of goodness, kindness, forgiveness, patience, and vulnerability. Yet life's tender fragility, fear, anxiety, and our own practiced self-sabotage can derail us from growing and thriving, leaving us fractured and afraid.
Ordained Buddhist teacher and Quaker Valerie Brown invites us into the heart of compassion, insight, and courage. Filled with Quaker wisdom, mindfulness meditation practices, and portraits of real people living out simple yet life-affirming bravery, Hope Leans Forward is a guidebook for all of us who are on journeys of self-transformation, self-discovery, and spiritual discernment.
Centering small, everyday acts of bravery with diverse stories from marginalized communities, Brown's unique perspective as a Black Buddhist Dharma teacher in the Plum Village tradition and her extensive leadership experience shepherd us in navigating life's essential questions to discover true aliveness and meaning. When we focus on cultivating clarity and discernment in our purpose, we begin to understand that we are truly connected to--and that we contribute to--a larger whole.
Written through a period of profound personal loss and in the urgency of the Black Lives Matter movement, Brown's spiritual insight and life- and spirit-tested wisdom offers a new source for anyone seeking hope, and seeking to alleviate suffering within ourselves and our communities.
Review
This extraordinary book is like a great river that delivers nutrients to all those on her shores. I have sat with the wisdom that Valerie Brown has shared in this remarkable volume and been uplifted and also grounded as she opens the heart of her reader through the courage and hope that she shares. --Roshi Joan Halifax, abbot, Upaya Zen Center
Hope Leans Forward is a deeply personal and rich book that does not hide the mud from which lotuses grow, but at the same time shows the lotuses in all their splendor.... As the author shows, our hope lies not so much in the future but in the present, for there we can listen to the voice of our soul in order to live in the service of a more compassionate life. --sister true virtue, Plum Village, France
To read this book is to feel more grounded and alive; to practice the wisdom within it is to open yourself to the possibilities of your own life. --Barry Crossno, general secretary, Friends General Conference
In this moment, when our interconnectedness and mutual vulnerability are more evident than ever, Valerie Brown's Hope Leans Forward offers a path luminescent in its pragmatism, crystal in its invitation to shared responsibility, gentle in its guiding steps and full of grace for each of us. --Sarah Willie-LeBreton, provost and dean of the faculty, professor of sociology and Black studies, Swathmore
Each chapter of Hope Leans Forward by Valerie Brown is an exploration of one of seven factors of awakening of Buddhist teaching and practice--mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity--in dialogue with Quaker tradition. In particular, Brown writes as a Buddhist-Quaker grounded in her practice of Kundalini Yoga. The end result is an excellent example of how the practice of interreligious dialogue more often than not expands one's faith journey in unexpected and creative ways. --Paul Ingram, The Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies
This wonderful book invites you in with its mix of warmth and empathy skillfully blended with a sense of adventure, discovery, and fun. It is rich, yet meant to be carried lightly. Practical, but in the service of the journey toward unknowing. Filled with helpful practices and powerful insights, it will help anyone chart the course toward spiritual maturity. --Rev. Seifu Anil Singh-Molares, executive director, Spiritual Directors International
Hope Leans Forward is equal parts inspirational and practical offering an abundance of wisdom and guidance at the intersection of multiple religious and spiritual traditions. --Lynn Screen, managing director, Institute for Transformational Leadership, Georgetown University School of Continuing Studies
In Hope Leans Forward Valerie Brown intimately weaves her own story and those of others to explore in a very deep way the seven factors of awakening in Buddhism and the inquiry and reflection of Quaker spirituality to provide a reader's guidebook to explore life's deepest questions, navigate life's inevitable rocky waters and hurt places, and cultivate clarity on the way to their true self. --Bill Pullen, MSOD, MCC, academic director, Institute for Transformational Leadership, Georgetown University School of Continuing Studies
My beloved sister in the Dharma, Valerie Brown offers all of us a beautiful stream of living inspiration and wisdom born of experience. Enjoy these precious and practical life stories. If you wish to be uplifted, this is a worthy read. --Dr. Larry Ward, The Lotus Institute and Buddhist Dharma teacher, Plum Village
--This text refers to the hardcover edition.
From the Publisher
Valerie Brown is an author and leadership coach and the Chief Mindfulness Officer of Lead Smart Coaching, as well as co-director of Georgetown University's Institute for Transformational Leadership. She is a Quaker and is among the few African American ordained Buddhist teachers from Plum Village, founded by Thich Nhat Hanh. Integrating mindfulness and leadership, Brown's vision is to foster individual and societal transformation through greater authenticity, trust, understanding, and love in action. She lives in New Hope, Pennsylvania. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
Publisher : Broadleaf Books (8 November 2022)
Language : English
File size : 900 KB
Tet-to-Speech : Enabled
Screxen Reader : Supported
271 in Personal Growth & Inspiration
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Valerie Brown
Valerie Brown is an author, ordained Buddhist-Quaker Dharma teacher in the lineage of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village tradition, facilitator, and executive coach specializing in leadership development and mindfulness with a focus on diversity, social equity, and inclusion. A former lawyer and lobbyist, Valerie transformed her high-pressure, twenty-year corporate career into serving leaders and nonprofits to create trustworthy, authentic, compassionate, and connected workspaces.
Her forthcoming book is Hope Leans Forward: Braving Your Way toward Simplicity, Awakening, and Peace (Broadleaf, 2022).
An accredited leadership coach, she is the Founder and Chief Mindfulness Officer of Lead Smart Coaching, LLC, supporting leaders to apply and integrate leadership and mindfulness for greater resilience, clarity, and creativity, and is a co-director of Georgetown’s Institute for Transformational Leadership.
Valerie leads an annual pilgrimage to El Camino de Santiago, Spain to celebrate the power of sacred places and is a certified Kundalini yoga teacher, engaging leaders to embody somatic wisdom and creativity.
www.valeriebrown.us
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