African women, writes the Ghanaian woman theologian Mercy Amba Oduyoye, "wear hope like a skin." The more desperate a situation is, the stronger the hope. We live by hope, says St. Paul. Hope stretches the limits of what is possible. It is linked with that basic trust in life without which we could not get from one day to the next.
— Mary C. Grey, The Outrageous Pursuit of Hope