Joy in THIS reality

January 2022

Between Omicron and a multi-day power outage, the first week of 2022 felt more like fresh hell than fresh beginning. Apparently, I needed to relearn what, way back in the Delta days, Nadia Bolz-Weber called ”the SAME DAMN lesson again.”

Actual reality is also the only place where actual joy is to be found. If joy is delayed until a preferred future comes about, we set ourselves up for despair. But if there is hope in THIS day. Joy in THIS reality. This life. This body. This heart, then certainly we can prevail.

—Nadia Bolz-Weber, The SAME DAMN Lesson Again

Some days will be magical. We will hold hands and dance, and laugh at how easy it all seems.

Other days will be hard. On those days, the muggle days, we will we not wait for the stars to align, or let the perfect be the enemy of the good. No, we shall live.

We will take THIS day and live. We will fill it with grand gestures, tiny acts of compassion, and everything in between—all growing between the cracks of THIS sidewalk.

When we’re bone tired, fed up, and heartbroken, we will breathe deep and gaze at the moon.

When even that is a struggle, we will simply breathe.

THIS breath.

It’s all we can ever do.

And it’s magic.