The horrors persists, but so does the goodness.

Nocturne in Black & Gold, the Falling Rocket by James MacNeill Whistler (1875)

Hello. Do you see that mound over there? That’s all the newsletters I’ve written and left unpublished over the last five weeks. Each time I reach the end of a draft and read through what I’ve just written, it is all very true, but a bit grim. Not that everything I write has to be uplifting - I am allowed as many downtrodden humors as the next person. But a writer like myself does try to self-edit. After I let those drafts simmer for a while on the back burner and returned to them, I was able to see them for what they are: important verbal processing on a scale that is best kept private. For now at least. I’m working through my feelings about entropy, disappointment, anticipatory grief, onism, infertility, and all the rest with someone I pay to help bring perspective. Namely, my therapist. I’ll spare you the raw footage.

Jokes aside, I treasure those spiraling drafts because they help coordinate my thoughts and show me what I’m actually thinking, instead of just feeling feeling feeling at all times like a sort of human hangnail. I don’t like being pure feeling. When I lose the ability to name my emotions, it’s exactly the same as when I - a poor swimmer - get a bit too far out into the ocean. A wave lifts me up, I lose contact with the seafloor, I worry about breathing.

They are odd, these times we are living in. Many people feel mutually not all right. Some of that is economics, and worries about the affordability of daily life. Some of that is politics, or the way politics and “news”-sharing play out across social media. Some of it is very personal, with illness, grief, endings, and beginnings tumbled together. This has been a heavy year in my own family, with many of us grappling with loss in one way or another. Our hearts fairly burst at the seams with trying to carry it all.

And yet, strangely, there is also an equal amount of beauty. It’s hard to believe, but there it is. One of the most comforting aspects of life is that somehow it all happens at once - and I’m not trying to be Pollyanna about this. It really does all happen at the same time, like tossing a handful of emotional confetti. You can literally be having the worst day of your life and then something pleasant happens. Or the best day, and something awful happens. Take it from one of my friends who experienced a breakup, got stung by a hornet, and received a massive pay-raise all in the same twenty-four hours. Iconic.

This year I’ve felt particularly soft to the both-ness of life. Maybe it’s the ongoing infertility. Living with compounding grief is difficult, but it has also made me far more aware of others’ experiences, of the connectedness we have in being people who feel and are carrying so many things. Yet again, maybe it’s the fact that this is the year I started seeing a counselor, and formally opened myself up to naming the non-shiny things. This practice has thinned my exoskeleton, which has in turn allowed me to experience a broader and fuller array of life itself. In any case, I don’t mind being tender to the world. You experience the lower feelings but you notice the more subtle highs as well.

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This morning, per my “wintering” practice, I took myself out for a long walk in the sunlight. We might be experiencing chillier weather but this is Virginia, and even in these short months the sun shines with a will. I’ve got to be out in it every day, or I feel like a caged thing. The stiff breeze that brought in our recent chill continued blowing throughout the walk. As I never walk very fast when alone, I was quickly passed by two older men. Behind them trailed the scent of laundry soap: a good, clean smell. In my exposed, tender soul, even this non-interaction felt soft to me. Later, I jotted it down in my journal:

“On my walk this morning I was hit with a good wallop of sonder - the realization that all these people have lives as full, complex, tender as my own. Two older men passed me, walking, and the scent of fresh laundry wafted after them. It gave a powerful impression of patient, faithful love and taking care of things. Of freshly laundered sweatpants and windbreakers, and the loving act of selecting a laundry soap, washing the things, putting them away fresh for someone else’s use…so things are not all a loss. We still take care of things, of each other.”

If you want to call me overly-sentimental I guess that’s okay. I’m not sure I care much, if being awake to the softness in the world is a wrong way to be. I’m a meaning-making person, and a harmony-seeking one. It kills me when people are unhappy together, and my gosh, doesn’t it seem like everyone is unhappy together? But that’s just it: they aren’t. I mean, for as much as the internet, the enemy, the harsh voices raised in pain want us to believe that we are so different, so against each other, so far gone that there is no hope…it just isn’t true.

Come, zip up your jacket. We’re going outside. We are going to walk and walk until we see something soft. Isn’t it funny? It will happen sooner than you expect: the elderly Filipino couple taking laps around the lake with a funny little spike for spearing trash; the girl running with her dog tied to her waist…the dog is smiling; the woman at the cafe writing thank-you cards as she enjoys a raspberry tart; the woman at the grocery store, offering her cart to another shopper; the man offering his place in line to me.

Oh, there are so many hard, harsh things in this world but if the horrors persist, so does the goodness. You can’t have pure, undistilled, nothing-can-break-through horribleness in a lifetime. You just can’t. It’s statistically impossible. I love how one ancient text speaks to this:

“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven. For he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”

(That ancient text is the Bible, by the way)

Good or bad, the sun and the rain are gifts to anyone living on Planet Earth (so take care of her, dangit). Even if you’re intentionally or tragically living the worst life imaginable, that sunlight today (the one you need for your physical health) is a goodness happening to you.

I’ve often thought about how I’m sure I couldn’t help feeling a tiny glimmer of hope - even in an intensely distressing situation - if I could at least see a corner of blue sky.

“Maybe,” you might say, “you’ve never been in a truly distressing situation if that’s how you feel!”

And you’re free to feel that way. But I’ve also been in my share of tough moments and been taken off-guard by the beauty that slinks by. And each time it happens, it feels like a gift. Like a testament to the fact that life is - despite it all - full of soft and tender things. There are so many soft and tender things.

I’m looking for them. Are you looking for them? I wish we could (as a group) feel the softness more keenly than we feel the pain, but I understand how pain rises to the top, too.

Here’s what I wish we could do: I wish you could come over to mine. We’d ignore the pain if you wanted to and I’d make you laugh (I’m good at this bit), or you could show me where it hurts. And though I might not be able to fix it, I will fix you a cup of tea and sit with you in biggest patch of sunlight we can find. We don’t have to talk about it, though we can if you want. And if it’s dark out, I will light a simply lavish amount of candles. And if we burn through all the candles, we can light the logs which are stacked in our fireplace for a really cold night. I promise to always have something to feed you, and two cats to cuddle. (Well, one to cuddle and one to pay homage to from a distance) And if you’re allergic to cats I promise to shut them up in our bedroom where they like to nap anyway, and then I’ll vacuum really well. When you’re feeling a little more alive, we can put on a record (Bruno Major), and play a game of Scrabble, or maybe do a craft. And as the little tiles click gently against the game board, or we cut shapes out of brown cardstock and paint them as fanciful animals or flowers or maybe Dutch houses, I hope you feel nothing but softness. I hope you feel the welcome, and see this home as a place of refreshment. A place where I will invite you to stay the evening, and try to see you. Whether or not I agree with your politics, life choices, or belief system, does not matter when it comes offering a place to rest. Truly, one of my biggest hopes is that my home is a place of warmth and peace. For me and Andrew, for you and yours.

I will probably never be known for being anything professionally aspirational - after all, nearly everything I aspire to is outside the realm of professionalism. But if I can be known as a joy-bringer and a lamp-lighter, that’s what I want. I’ve always been a collector of these gifts, softness and light. Now I am also a collector of tenderness. I want to be a lantern glinting softly at the doorpost, showing weary-boned travelers a place of peace. And in every way I know how, in my house, at my workplace, in this newsletter - I want to reflect the goodness of these gifts. These gifts which are, really, just the warmth of Christ wrapped in earth-shapes.

So this is how I’m moving forward in these dusty days: doing the work my hands know how to do. A soup, a smile, a sketch, a Substack. Small flares in the night sky, each one a five-second reminder of joy. Thank you for joining me here each time. It is a gift to have your attention. I hope you feel rested in return.

Love,

Rachel