We do not know what will happen. Disasters will strike, and great blessings will come. Our difficult and glorious task is to live through it all. Paying attention is essential, as is remembering that, as Soelle writes, "the experience that Jesus had in Gethsemane goes beyond. . . destruction. It is the experience of assent." In that gruesome and interminable night, waiting revealed itself as a true ally, a bulwark against fear. And Jesus became the most radically free and dangerous man of all, the one who embodies hope in the face of death and is afraid of nothing.
----------------------Kathleen Norris, Acedia and Me
