Wonder for love…

Entering into a new year after last.. we know that now more than ever, we need to find wonder and beauty to continue healing our heavy and broken hearts.

"Throughout the past few days as I read article after article, news alerts and constant updates howling of the brutal and heinous attack that was committed, I felt like my heart went flat. There was this collapse that happened as I began to greive... for people I never knew, for lives that I've never touched or been touched by, lives that made others' lives more livable, for family and friends that are waging wars with the whys...

I feel a pulling as God enlarges my heart. I am actively learning that my heart is not only stretched when I experience something first-hand that is hard for me, but when I see tragedy that never should have been... Catastrophe that I cannot comprehend. I just don't understand...

Today, my heart hurts as it longs to expand and branch out, wishing to somehow reach and comfort those who are experiencing loss... And yet, I feel the loss myself.

I unconsciously hold my breath as I think about these crises, and the etymology of the word "crisis", or cretus, which means to sift."

It is in the center of the crises when the sifting happens... When everything else - all of the inanimate details of our lives: our cars, jobs, plans, homes, finances, vacations, retirement plans, the things that we think matter most - fall away... and we are able to see clearly, the only REAL thing that is left: LOVE.

And for one brief moment, we remember what we sometimes forget in the bustle and chaos of life... We remember that we are ONE. Despite the disunity and disconnection within our society and culture, we remember that though we have differences, we are still the SAME in our bare-naked, raw humanity.

In this haunting quiet, we finally exhale and let ourselves crash inwards to mourn; and we become aware of what life is like for us when it is lived out in hatred and fear by others. It is dark. It is scary. It is hopeless. And it is heartbreaking, because it is loveless...

You may think I am crazy to propose that we seek to find WONDER during such a time as this. But that is exactly what I'm going to do.

But how you ask? How do we find WONDER in the darkness and pain? In the face of tragedy and suffering? When we are surrounded by a ripple of wailing caused by ongoing affliction?

Well, the way I see it, there is WONDER in offering to share in that pain - to give what we can of ourselves, and to know that the saying is true: "shared joy is double joy and shared sorrow is half sorrow." To simply let those that have suffered know that they do not stand alone; that their story is heard and it echoes throughout the nation. As humans who seek to comfort, we find there is WONDER in simply loving others - ALL others. In their lives, and into eternity...

It is a call for something so simply human and something so super-human at the same time. We come together. We mourn. Not because there is a social responsibility to do so, but because during a crisis, we come explicitly close with the reality that we share the very same breath of life with one another. And at our most basic human level, we seek to help and heal one another. We fight to find solutions and in doing so, forget our individual intentions and selflessly melt back into ONE.

Only here in the midst of the tragedy is LOVE, not only desperately needed, but it is projected, and it is STRIKINGLY BRILLIANT against the backdrop of hate, fear, anger, and confusion.

Here is where WONDER comes in. It is a WONDER mesmerized and captivated in awe by love. A WONDER for how connected we truly are. And the truth that we belong to one another.

We will continue to try to find some sort of solace in this crisis. As a writer, unfortunately I know that words are not enough. Only LOVE is..."