4 December. This 'Wave of Hope' reflection for Advent comes from Nikki Dhillon Keane, a therapist, trainer, author, activist and founder of Safe in Faith, a project of Caritas Westminster.
This Wave of Hope reflection for Advent comes from Nikki Dhillon Keane, a therapist, trainer, author, activist and founder of Safe in Faith, a project of Caritas Westminster working to support survivors of domestic abuse, sexual violence and exploitation in ways that understand how their faith impacts their experiences.
Nikki reflects on the hope she finds in accompanying people on their personal journeys:
“The thing that gives me hope more than anything is the privilege of being able to accompany people on that journey from danger to safety, that journey of trauma recovery, that journey from despair to hope.”
Wave of Hope offers 25 short multimedia reflections for the season – one a day – as our contributors share a moment in 2025 that has led them to a place of hope.
The thing that gives me hope more than anything is the privilege of being able to accompany people on that journey from danger to safety, that journey of trauma recovery, that journey from despair to hope.
Something I’ve learned over the years is that despair and hope are not opposites. They’re actually two sides of the same coin. We don’t have one without the other. When we talk about hope in a really prosaic way, we talk about it as a verb. There’s a tendency when we talk about hope as a gift from God to change it into a noun. I think we lose something by doing that because hope is something that’s active and something that we live every day.
Actually, as part of the legacy of the Year of Hope, we are going to be launching a service called Caritas Hope that will be an umbrella for Safe in Faith and for other services that also support people in different ways.
My hope for the future is that we will carry on growing and carry on being able to reach people and help them change lives and save lives, and that that work will continue.
Canon Chris Vipers is Director of the Diocese of Westminster's Agency for Evangelisation.
Fr Issa Thaljieh is a Greek Orthodox priest from the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem.
Dr Christine Allen is Director of CAFOD, the Church's official aid agency.
Bishop Richard Moth is the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton and Lead Bishop for Prisons for the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales.
