“We should do whatever we can to bring courage to those whose lives move near our own.”
—Fred Rogers

Finding courage on my own to live in the Shadows of the past is hard. But it is somehow made easier when I imagine there are other frightened people around me also living with their corpses, in their haunted homes, battling things of long ago that hold real or imaginary power over them. I know what this is like, and I want you to know I’m here, too. I have a little shiny sword called, Courage, that glitters, like Bilbo’s did when orcs came near, when the past comes into my kitchen to mock and taunt and gibe. It comes from another Place, and it carries with it in its swift blows, a song, a whistling hopeful sound from that Place. Look here! it says, you shall not last forever! Your present powers are on a timer, and every day you draw nearer to your final grave while I draw nearer to my Inheritance, imperishable and unfading.

Courage. I hope for you that you find courage today to sow imperishable things, things that look tiny and strange, like, “honor your father and mother”….and “love your enemies”….and “pray for those who hate you”. They look weak, but they have promises attached to them. I hope your courage brightens even through your tears.

“Although we are weeping, Lord, help us keep sowing the seeds of your kingdom.” —Bonhoeffer

bear: inf. verb: to bear /ber/

1: (of a person) carry. Bring, transport, move 2. endure (an ordeal or difficulty). stand, suffer, abide 3. give birth to (a child). produce, yield, carry

There is something about this world, as if it were pregnant. There is a pregnancy within us, a new life forming. There are hints of it, flutters of movement in the heart of longing for something never-before-seen and brand new. There is also a groaning, an aching, a looking out of the window at the perfect shape of the tips of the branches in Spring, waving, not by accident, yet so bleakly against a swirling gray sky, as if pointing through them with their about-to-burst fingers of hidden petals. Like fingers, tiny and never-yet-kissed, stroking the inside of a dark, watery womb, promising something more coming. This is the Mystery of new birth….alive, whole, precious within, but not yet arrived. We are weighed down with life, old life, pressing down into our joints, heavy to bear. But we are also weighed down with the new life that has been planted within, a never-yet-breathed life, tender, achingly sweet, promised. And we must bear this life, too. And it, too, presses down into us, heavier every day with the promise of Real Joys, revealed secrets; some preciously familiar, reflecting our own selves back to us in fresh, bright, new eyes.

This life is fading away into greyness. Yet it secretly bears something within it, as if in hidden- womb -places. It is in kindnesses of long-known friends, in hearthfire conversations, in late nights spent in laughter, in a promise kept for years until death, in children’s looking for themselves in their father’s eyes…in these there is a quickening. There is movement, there is life within the burden-bearing.

“There is a crack, there is a crack in everything…that’s how the light gets in.” —Leonard Cohen

And that’s how it gets out.

“And all these are but the beginnings of the birth pains.” —Matthew 24:8