This is a dark time we are living through but the light always returns.
The Dawn
The good news is, no night has even survived a dawn.
Anne Lamott is one of my favourite American writers who is a Christian. She is level headed as well as funny. Her faith informs her optimism, especially in this dark time.
She wrote, “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.”
“Teachers and librarians are allies for souls who have been dismissed as hopeless. These unabashed do-gooders will definitely get the best seats in heaven, nearest the dessert table. What they have to offer — patience, companionship, poetry — is about to be defunded by the new administration, but not by us. They ask me for direction, because I am a Sunday school teacher, and they feel like children: “How will we get through the next four years?”
I tell them a few things that always help me.
First, I tell them what my Jesuit friend Father Tom Weston (addiction recovery) says when I call him for help when I feel craziest. After assuring me once more that he can counsel Protestants, too, if they are pitiful enough, he always says, “We do what’s possible.” So, we are kind to ourselves. We take care of the poor. We get hungry kids fed.
Second, I tell them what Susan B. Anthony’s grandniece said. (When she first began campaigning for women’s rights, Anthony was harshly ridiculed and accused of trying to destroy the institution of marriage.) Also named Susan B. Anthony, she told her therapy clients that in very hard times, we remember to remember. Remember that the light always returns.
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