JOYFUL PIECE #15

Beneath the rubble of buildings and broken lives...

Image by Carulmare, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Traumatized by world events: trapped under the weight of images, news, information, I find it difficult at times to recenter my soul. There is a gnawing in my heart, an angst, before all the manifest evil. This feeling works against my joy in life and my experience of all the blessings around me.

In my heart, I walk amidst the rubble of images of pain and suffering. I stumble on the debris of broken promises, of dashed possibilities. I look for a way out, confused by emotions, fears. My head is in a cloud of dust, from the incessant din of messages with the biased assessments and pronouncements from pundits and commentators. 

The so-called news is followed by commercials with indolent messages of consumption at a time of grief, adding to the confusion and despair. 

Pausing to absorb the weight of sorrow, slowly, the arms of compassion embrace me. The uncertainty and fear begin to recede. Hope for a better tomorrow begins to emerge. And deep under the avalanche of cruel and inexcusable events I find that the flame of faith still burns. It illuminates the eternal joy that cannot be buried, that needs only to be uncovered. So, I reach for the frail thread of faith, and hopeful, begin to retrieve the joy that I was in danger of ignoring. 

To sustain life, we need faith. We need hope. We need dreams. We need the never-ending Love and Joy that caused us to be born.

Justice, healing, peace, faith, hope…and quiet, abiding joy to our grieving world.