And there in that moment, like so many other moments, I was holding the grief of a war I am powerless to stop and the absolute awe at a God that continues to make the sky, the moon, the sun, so beautiful. It seems I am here to learn over and over again this truth from Rilke in his poem Go to the Limits of Your Longing:

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Beauty and terror seem to accompany each other, no matter what road we travel. And I hate that.

But, I am perhaps old enough now to also love it. Because how would I move from day to day holding only terror. Knowing only the death of a little girl named Noor and not the beauty of a super moon to light her passing?

It reminds me too of the interview we did with on — she made a comment that keeps replaying in my head: that awe is the thing that allows us to hold these diametrically opposed feelings simultaneously. To have joy in one hand and fear in the other. To carry love and regret. To see the suffering in the world and still know the beauty.

And this idea leads me to one of my favorites from theologist Jeffrey Vogel in his book All Manner of Things:

Those who believe in Christ are safe to look for goodness in their suffering, safe even to speak of the gifts they discover there, not because suffering is ever good, but because God is good and God enters into our suffering.

And whether or not you believe in traditional Christianity, I think the idea holds that belief in a higher power or nature or a sympathetic universe, lets us safely find good in every circumstance, because the divine is present in every circumstance.

I wouldn’t presume to hand this sentiment to anyone actually in one of the (too many) active war zones at the moment — truly the only sentiment worth giving to those who are living this out right now is love.

And so I love the super moon. I love little Noor and her parents. I love the divine presence that settles over all of us, no matter where, no matter when. The great blue of the sky that continues to show up, day after day.

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We are fragile, vulnerable, and impermanent in this world—but that’s what makes us beautiful. Our joy is to know and rejoice in the beauty of each other and every fragile thing.

2:

Stars and blossoming fruit trees: Utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity. The vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence.

— Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

3:

Amazement

Innumerable and boundless sustances of the Earth:

Scent of thyme, hue of fir, white frost, dances of cranes.

And everything simultaneous. And probably eternal.

Unseen, unheard, yet it was.

Unexpressed by strings or tongues, yet it will be.

Raspberry ice cream, we melt in the sky.

— Czeslaw Milosz, New and Collected Poems

4:

My joy is more full because of the success of my brethren.

— Alma 29:14

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In quiet places we can hear the love of God, a love with the power to change us. The confusion and tension wars and drought and fire are real and present, but they aren’t strong enough to defeat love.

2:

Hope not being hope

until all ground for hope has

vanished

…

Brimming with inner light—that

covets nothing that it has let go

Marianne Moore, The Hero

3:

We can be changed by the sight of great love.

Alma 20:26

4:

What enormous love can we put into the world?

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Goodness never fails—it draws to us in sorrow. God brings that goodness underneath our feet. The only stone he sends is the stone that anchors us in sorrow. We can bear it all through him.

2:

What man is there of you, who, if his son ask bread, will give him a stone?

3 Ne 14:8

3:

The experience of drawing near to goodness in the midst of sorrow, of approaching it, is allowed for, made possible by, the belief that this goodness already draws near to us, that it does not await our sinking. The rock we touch in the midst of [sorrow] is there because we are there and not simply because we happened to drift in its direction.

Jeffrey Vogel, All Manner of Things

4:

There is a strength in proving that it can be borne

Although it tear

Emily Dickinson, Poem #1113

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We need to see ourselves with love in order to see others with love and without judgment. The world is plump full of the miraculous—attend to what is here and what is good and what is growing.

2:

We must look at each other in the eye if we are to ever look at ourselves.

Best of Brevity

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One cannot do better than hold on to the thought of God come what may … it is good to go on believing that everything is more miraculous than one can ever begin to understand … It is good to remain sensitive and humble and tender-hearted.

Vincent Van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

4:

Judge not.

3 Ne 13:1

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Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

Consider the lilies of the field how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.

If God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, even so will he clothe you.

3 Ne 13: 25-30

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God cares about fields of grass, God cares about each of us. He clothes the lilies, inviting us to let go of time and let go of control. To stop filling the present with the past and the future. It is all present, all eternal. And it is all in His hands.

3:

Each [seashell] is part of the world. I take them back to the edge of the water, to the earth-pile of ever reusable materials.

Mary Oliver, Long Life

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If we apply to the present the point of that desire within us which corresponds to finality, it pierces right through to the eternal. We want the future to be there without ceasing to be the future.

Simone Weil, Gravity & Grace

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Christ is already here, everything beneath our feet is Christ. Even the silence is built of Him. Pray knowing the air around us is infused with Christ and eternal healing. He’s here, right now.

2:

Stop this day and night with me

and you shall possess the origin of all poems

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand

You shall listen to all sides

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

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One comes to understand this hiddenness [of God] not as a refusal to be revealed, but as the very nature of the ground on which one stands, the form of that which holds us up and supports us.

Jeffrey Vogel, All Manner of Things

4:

Pray to thy Father … your Father knoweth what things ye have need of.

3 Ne 13:6, 8

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We can all feel a void inside ourselves that we try to fill. But, if we stop stuffing it, God will fill the void. With hearts broken, we beg for tender judgment and He receives us always—everything in us becomes new.

2:

Come unto me with a broken heart. I will receive you.

3 Ne 12:19, 24

3:

Come what may, the universe is full.

Simone Weil, Gravity & Grace

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Judge tenderly of me.

Emily Dickinson, Poem #441

What would happen if we used power for kindness and generosity?

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Let your light so shine.

3 Ne 12:16

3:

And here is the monarch’s chrysalis, dangling under the threshold. Rain and wind worry us, but if we rescue it, we will damage it beyond repair.

Kathleen McGookie, Heart in a Jar

4:

We’re all talented, but few of us think it is important enough to pursue.

Peter Johnson; Truths, Falsehoods, and a Wee Bit of Honesty

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There is a way for peace to prevail. Even here, even now.

2:

Arise and come forth unto me.

3 Ne 11:14

3:

It is not Christ’s doctrine to stir up the hearts of men with anger, one against another; but this is His doctrine that such things should be done away.

3 Ne 11:30

4:

Sincerity is a duty.

Vincent Van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

God’s everlasting kindness connects us to ourselves, to others, to the capacity to feel the deep worth of our own soul—until fear is pocketed, submerged, and sunk.

2:

He loveth our souls as well as he loveth our children.

Alma 24:14

3:

What all who suffer need is not only eyes upon us but life within us, a companion within the experience of suffering itself, such that it cannot cut us off from all others, cannot have us wholly for itself, even in the quietest hours.

Jeffrey Vogel, All Manner of Things

4:

Everlasting kindness

3 Ne 22:8

5:

Thou shalt not fear

3 Ne 22:14

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God is with us even during silence, His generous forgiving always on the edge around us. Be brim full of joy for redeeming love. Brim full.

2:

My joy is full … my heart is brim with joy … in God’s strength I can do all things

Alma 26:11

3:

We might have preferred for God to show up differently in our suffering. We might have wanted God to arrive with the brute strength of the gods, to heal us or to hasten our deaths, to issue a command from on high, from outside the processes that ensnare us. Instead, we have God within us, the word at the source of our being, the word which, when contradicted, is anguish itself. That word is not silenced in the lives of the sorrowful. It is heard as much in their quieted voices as in any ecstatic praise.

Jeffrey Vogel, All Manner of Things

4:

Her fragile throat, her female organs,

Her multicolored dress, creams, and trinkets

Are embraced by forgiveness. What is not embraced

By forgiveness?

Czeslaw Milosz, Lecture VI

… when the storm cometh they shall be gathered together in their place …

Alma 26:6

I resist anything better than my own diversity,

And breathe the air and leave plenty after me,

And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

The moth and the fish eggs are in their place,

The suns I see and the suns I cannot see are in their place,

The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Could it be said that all of our images of salvation must, in the end, be variations on this theme of creation mended and flourishing?

Jeffrey Vogel, All Manner of Things

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