Deserts

Despite sufferering, one  does not fall into despair when there is still hope.

Some think that despair is a noble way to live, but despair is really only useful if it is a transitional state.

Despair is really only an option when you are bound and determined not to transition.

It’s a hard thing, to make that leap. For instance, where does cowardice transition to bravery? The brave heart is as afraid as the cowardly one. There comes a moment in the gloaming, though, where the day becomes night, the butterfly emerges from the caterpillar, and no one can pinpoint where it is except to guess that it is the same thing. But it isn’t the same thing. It had better not be.

Things here are hard. Grim, in that I do not see where the change will come from. Hopeful in the knowledge that unforeseen change does come. Hopeful in the knowledge that we do not really see what is happening until it’s happened. While we are busy writing the alternative fictional version of reality, the Berlin Wall falls. Regimes collapse. We learn from that, not to believe so much in the story that we are writing, to instead hope in the sure knowledge of the unseen, or we don’t; we keep on chasing our own tails.

We are long past the point of despair here, but we are looking in hope for grace. The grace of opportunity and the grace of the willingness to seize it. The grace to transition.

Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.