For a Nation, For a Single Life

I cannot wrap my mind around the suffering that is Japan, a nation. Neither can I conceive of the loss of a single life, at the home of a friend this past week.

Then my little girl brings crystalline purple into the house, smiles. "All the crocuses are open outside!" she beams. I cannot hold the experiences in tandem.

For a long time, I stare at the way the light is coming through crocus petals. The petals are already wilting, and I know that tomorrow they will no longer be a filter for light, for day.

I open pages to a book called, simply, Beauty. (Thank you, Kathleen.) The words console, though at the same time nothing could ever, ever console...

At birth we were awakened and emerged to become visible to the world. At death we will surrender again to the dark to become invisible. Awakening and surrender: they frame each day and each life; between them the journey where anything can happen, the beauty and the frailty...

All the frailty and uncertainty was seen [by the ancients] to be ultimately sheltered by the eternal beauty which presides over all journeys between awakening and surrender, the visible and the invisible, the light and the darkness.

I look at the crocus and see that the light has moved on. And I wait for tomorrow.