Times that challenge us physically, emotionally, and spiritually

may make it almost impossible for us to feel grateful.

Yet, we can decide to live gratefully,

courageously open to life in all its fullness.

~Br. David Steindl Rast

when mystery arrives…

inquiry for today~ where did you stray and how will you return?

how to tell your truth….

Once, walking through a centuries-old gilded cathedral in a small Mexican town with a beloved companion, I found myself in tears at the thought of all the people now dead who once sat in those pews and lit candles at that altar and whispered their hopes to those saints; at the realization that we too will have been, that the sum total of our prayers and passions will one day be a votive melted in a pool of itself.

It is a mercy that we walk through the world half-blind to the reality of time and transience, or we would be walking through it in tears- through the immense cathedral of time that Earth is, with its neatly lined pews of geologic strata holding the history of life, which is the history of loss. And yet the very fact that any one life exists against the cosmic odds of eternal night and nothingness is miracle enough- a triumph of the possible over the probable, a concatenation of chemistry and chance gilded with wonder.

~Maria Popova