Joy and Sorrow

How does one move from sorrow to joy?
Step one, admit and grieve your sorrow.
Step two, give thanks for all that is joyful and joy-filled everything else.
Step three, repeat step two.
Step four (optional), repeat step one when necessary.
Step five, repeat steps two and three.
Step six, open your eyes.

I am so very grateful for all of the good, very good gifts of God in this life.
I see my earlier sorrow and see it diminished.

Dear God

Dear God,
Help me to rejoice with those who rejoice. 
Even when I am weeping on the inside.
Amen.

Miscarried Hope, an Advent (I) Reflection

To what will this season give birth?
For what (whom) am I waiting?
For what do I long?

For hopes and dreams miscarried by disappointment.
The end of some lives, some hopes for life
washed out in a bloody painful flux.

Where is the promise of new life to take root and blossom,
in scarred wombs convulsing with the pains of miscarriage
parodying the pains that give birth to life?

And what of the empty wombs of barren women?
For what do they long and how will this holy season give birth to and for them?

Can the youth and fertility of one otherwise insignificant girl child restore us all?
Redeem us all?
Give life to us all?
Save us all?

I wait in the eclipsing darkness
shadowed by the light of a single candle
the deepest night with all its terrors is behind me
I feel its breath on my neck.

Before me is that single candle
and in its shadow
another
waiting.

What will the next explosion of light reveal?