gifts in the dark.

"Someone I loved once handed me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift." - Mary Oliver

I have, a handful of times, been present for the moment when a person takes their last breath. And I have, a handful of times, held a once breathing, but now not, person.

It’s hard to describe - because life is there, and then suddenly it is not. At least, not as we once knew it.

Once it was a baby. A little boy born to early to survive. I was a 23 year old chaplaincy intern, and, while young and stupid in many ways, I had the sense in that moment to know that I was being given the opportunity to witness something both beautiful and awful, and that it might change me forever. I knew that holding him, praying a blessing over his sweet life, was teaching me something that I couldn’t even understand yet.

I think of that baby often. Not in a haunting or morbid way, but because remembering that baby is one of the ways I practice gratitude for life - and how I acknowledge that we so often waste it.

I am also self-aware enough to know that the story behind my writing today is that one of my oldest and dearest friends is dying. Maybe not immediately, maybe not anytime soon, but sooner than anyone who loves him can bear to realize. And while any one of us can die by accident or random violence at any moment, it hits different when you know for sure it is coming.

We are but dust. And to dust we will return.

And this is why I am so angry and sad at the ways we are ignoring the vulnerability and deep truths of our existence at the feet of all that is undoing us.

AI is consuming our potable water and our humanity faster than any dazzling creation it enables can capture or keep our attention.

The algorithm is doing exactly what it was designed to do - keep us distracted and angry and outraged, so much that we miss real danger and isolate ourselves from the relationships and ways of being God created us for.

There is no way around the truth that we value power and money over life.

And there is no way around the truth that racism is real and so is misogyny and we’d rather protect systems than people.

Look, y’all I’m not trying to be a downer. For one, it’s not in my nature to do so - despite my anger and sadness I remain a hopeful person. I see too much goodness in the world, too much light in the darkness, to be otherwise.

I mean, did you see the way Ilia Malinin rose to his feet to cheer for Alysa Liu, his own devastation a few days earlier no matter? The grin on his face was pure joy, and knowing what dark days he’s had, it felt like pure grace.

And I get it - it’s just ice skating. But the truth is that far more seemingly inconsequential things have stood as reminders that even the tiniest light will completely destroy any amount of dark.

We cannot lose our humanity, dear ones. We cannot let that which is dark and ugly take from us all that is good and joyful. To do so is to let evil win, plain and simple. And while evil certainly seems to be having its moment, I’ll give you that, I do not for one moment believe it will ultimately triumph.

It is that which makes us human that matters most - the good, the bad and the ugly of it - and it is that which makes us human that will, I believe, save us. Or at least redeem all that we’ve made awful in our fear and hate.

Rose colored glasses? Maybe. I’ve been accused of as much before.

But mostly I’d say grit. And knowing that hope isn’t, after all, a rosy thing to begin with. Hope bruises your knees. It causes and dries your tears both. It promises that the worst things are never the last things. And it always makes room for mercy.

Even in the darkness.