6/24/2019 0 Comments Coexist...something beautiful is also going on. I took this photo one evening as I held all of my fellow fertility pilgrims in prayer. To the right of this photo was a most magnificent sunset, hues of orange and yellow and fuchsia reflecting off suspended clouds. To the left was a dramatic dark sky, interrupted by flashes of sheet lightening. As I stood with my face to the warm breeze, the first drops of rain began to fall and it struck me that these two very different horizons can coexist. On the fertility journey - as in all of life - there is both breathtaking beauty and unimaginable pain. There are times when I have found myself in the midst of a thunderstorm, frightened and drenched and cold. But that is never the whole story. There is always more light somewhere, perhaps just beyond the horizon or hidden from my view behind the grey clouds. It is when darkness closes in that I've most needed others. I've needed those who understand that the storm is real but can also remind me that the sun still exists and that I will feel its warmth again. Sometimes it's a matter of waiting it out. Sometimes I need to make a move and change something that's not working for me. In this journey called life, I very often have a choice as to where I turn my gaze. I can look toward the dark sky and despair. I can turn my face and delight in the sunshine. I can live in the paradox, acknowledging both the pain and the beauty at the same time. This is how I step into my power. This is how I make my peace. How can we celebrate paradox, let alone manage at all, knowing how scary the future may be.... We remember that because truth is paradox, something beautiful is also going on. So while trusting that and waiting for revelation, we do the next right thing. We tell the truth. We march, make dinner, have rummage sales to raise relief funds. Whoever arranges such things keeps distracting us and shifting things around so we don't get stuck in hopelessness: we can take one loud, sucking, disengaging step back into hope. We remember mustard seeds, that the littlest things will have great results. We do the smallest, realest, most human things. We water that which is dry.
- Anne Lamott, Almost Everything: Notes on hope -
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