Joy is Now

"Joy in the present makes joy in the future seem plausible." — Jenka Gurfinkel

"The whole world is a very narrow bridge. And the most important thing is not to be afraid." — Rebbe Nachman of Breslov

---

The drive to Leadville unfolded quick and snowless, remarkable for its lack of traffic and the troubling absence of the white stuff we desperately need. The peaks stood tall and nearly naked while cold wind whipped dry old flakes across the road in ghostly patterns. We left the world behind as we climbed into the small mountain town perched at 10,200 feet where my friend has recently acquired a home.

We spent the weekend setting up furniture and dashing into Leadville's lovely, artistic novelty shops at close intervals to warm ourselves in the single-digit temperatures. After weeks of heartbreaking headlines, I found myself startled by art that lifted me up—including a simple print declaring "Joy is now" that I encountered on Friday and returned to on Saturday afternoon following a bracing seven-mile walk. Delighted to discover a keychain bearing the same words, I replaced my old "Number one mom" token with this new talisman, not yet understanding why these three words felt so necessary.

The understanding arrived this morning when I read Gurfinkel's observation that joy in the present makes future joy seem plausible. Of course. Joy hides, harder to locate in these difficult days, yet I've found it flickering in the radiant faces of my athletes who shattered lifetime bests, in my daughter's return from Guatemala with stories and lovely photos, in mountain walks where breath comes sharp and clean, in hours spent with friends who understand without explanation. These fleeting moments become the lights we follow through darkness.

On Sunday, Daniel and I attended a gathering to hear Phil Weiser, who's running for the Democratic nomination for Colorado governor. Weiser proved outstanding—an accomplished and thoughtful speaker who addressed the events unfolding in Minneapolis and across the country by encouraging us toward bravery rather than despair. "In my faith tradition," he said, invoking Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, "we learn that the whole world is a very narrow bridge. The bridge might be scary to cross, but we must move forward. The most dangerous time comes when we lose equilibrium because we're overcome by our own fear."

The words settled into me like medicine. Life is always a narrow bridge—sometimes we traverse it with ease because we're not looking down, not paralyzed by the distance between ourselves and the rocks below. Other times we freeze mid-crossing, stilled by our downward gaze, unable to take the next step. Overcoming that fear, raising our eyes to the horizon and the possible future waiting there, becomes necessary for any forward movement at all.

The people of Minneapolis inspire me to imagine that future—one where we care for our neighbors as fiercely as we protect our own families, where peaceful protest remains sacred and safe, where we weave bright tapestries together from threads of mutual commitment and shared vision. Joy is now, yes—in the mountain air and the athlete's triumph, in the keychain that reminds me to look up rather than down. And joy now makes the bridge crossable, makes the other side seem possible, gives us the equilibrium we need to keep moving forward despite our fear. The bridge may be narrow, but we don't have to cross it alone.

Reprisal: Hold on to What You Believe

 "Hold on to what you believe, in the night, when the darkness has robbed you of all your sight."                 - Mumford & Sons, "Hold on to What You Believe"

From March, 2013:

In the dark nights when I was most ill, I believed in two things: first, that the life force threading through all the universe flows for good, and second, that the love of family and friends would hold me when I fell.  Many times friends had sight when I had none, when my recovery seemed hopeless. Now I believe something else: that I will be totally well.  Beliefs are urgent when the darkness falls, but must be cultivated in the light. Thankfully I can almost shut the door on the past, and move on to live in the bright spaces.

January, 2026:

Hold on to what you believe in the dark night of our country's soul. Cultivate those beliefs now—in community, in shared resistance, in small acts of grace and large acts of courage. Some days, others will have to hold the vision for us when we cannot see the way forward. We take turns carrying the light, trusting that dawn will come even when we can't imagine its arrival. We have survived dark nights before. We will survive this one, too—not unchanged, but perhaps stronger for having learned what we're willing to fight for.

Grounding in Difficult Times

The first ten days of 2026 delivered little snow and many painful, disturbing headlines. I want to write about all of it, and also about nothing at all. My brain spins with news of invasions and climate catastrophes, the death of innocents—then leaps away from every touchpoint like a finger retracting from a hot stove. The body knows when to pull back, when exposure threatens to burn us beyond our capacity to heal.

My New Year's goal to meditate—or at least breathe in a focused way for five minutes—lasted two and a half days before collapsing under the weight of reality. I've downsized the ambition: now I aim to remember to take a deep breath every once in a while, to focus for one minute on where my feet are and how I can stay rooted to that particular spot on earth. I will return to the expanded goal because meditation has steadied me through previous dark times, and this practice of returning—of beginning again without self-judgment—may be the most important lesson of all.

I find myself asking when we collectively lost access to our prefrontal cortex, that crucial portion of the brain that manages emotions, attention, self-control, and decision-making? When did our society surrender the duties of self-restraint, respect for others, and the assumption of positive intent? The questions themselves feel inadequate, searching for a single moment of fracture when the truth is more complex—a slow erosion rather than a sudden collapse, countless small abandonments that accumulated until we woke to find ourselves here.

As a white person born in this country, I've been shielded from rage and reactivity for much of my life. As a woman, I've endured being bullied or ignored, minimized and scrutinized by society, yet I've been fortunate to escape far worse. This awareness sits heavy—how I've mostly evaded the crushing weight of sustained trauma, the exhaustion of existing as someone else's target, the shock of becoming a repository for misplaced rage. Many people in our country have endured these conditions for what must feel like never-ending lifetimes, and also lives cut tragically short. Their resilience in the face of such sustained assault offers its own form of testimony, its own quiet instruction in how to persist.

I struggle under the onslaught of bad news, the struggle compounded by guilt and uncertainty about how to create meaningful change. Yet I keep returning to what I can touch and tend: my family and friends, those connections that anchor me when the world spins too fast. We've planned a visit to New York to see William. We celebrated our youngest's acceptance to CSU for fall 2026—his face splitting into that particular grin that erases years and lights the future. We carved out a day of rest watching sports, letting ourselves look away from the headlines without drowning in shame for the looking away. These moments don't solve anything, but they sustain us for the work ahead.

Writing about difficult times can deliver me from the mental treadmill, that "monkey mind" that ambushes me for thirty minutes each evening when my head meets the pillow. Focusing on gratitude and moments of genuine connection also helps, as do plans for future reunions—the simple act of believing in a future where we can gather. I'm learning that tending to my own people, ensuring they're seen and loved and supported, is not selfishness but preparation. We cannot pour from empty vessels, cannot offer strength we haven't cultivated in ourselves.

If you're feeling this weight, you're not alone—though I know that knowledge doesn't always lighten the load. We're all searching for our own forms of grounding, our own ways to remain present and useful in times that demand more than we have to give. The work is to keep showing up, to practice those deep breaths, to notice where our feet are planted, to tend our connections with care. Some days, that's enough. Some days, it has to be.

Shadows on the Cave Wall

Our family attended Christmas Eve service at St. Andrew UMC, the first time in several years we've gathered in person rather than streaming from a laptop while traveling or huddled on the couch recovering from illness. The service unfolded with particular beauty—readers delivering their passages with practiced grace, our favorite a cappella group (Reunited choir) leading us through traditional hymns, the candlelight rendering of "Silent Night" with its wavering flames casting shadows across upturned faces, and a thought-provoking sermon by Rev. Mark Feldmeir that has lodged itself in my mind like a burr I can't shake loose.

Rev. Mark used Jesus' actual birthplace—a cave inhabited by livestock—as his jumping-off point for exploring Plato's Allegory of the Cave from The Republic. In this allegory, three individuals sit chained in darkness, their necks and ankles bound so they can see nothing but the cave's back wall. Their eyes strain into the murk, perceiving only faint shadows of events unfolding behind them. The sun casts dim light into the cave's mouth like an old-time movie projector, and the true events and sounds happening in the world beyond reach them only as blurred, distorted images and garbled echoes.

What is truth? Rev. Mark asked us. We don't even remember that Jesus was born in a cave—our Nativity scenes portray cozy wooden barns with abundant light sources, angels glowing, lanterns gleaming. Whatever we grow accustomed to seeing, hearing, feeling becomes our truth. Real people, actual events, genuine conversations—these get obscured by the third or three-hundredth retelling, our version shaped by confirmation biases and emotional attachments, smoothed into something more palatable than the rough edges of reality.

How astonishing that this twenty-four-hundred-year-old allegory applies to human knowledge with even greater urgency now. Rev. Mark observed how we stare at the flickering screens of our phones—our Instagrams and Reddits, YouTube and Snapchat—as if they constitute reality. We sit metaphorically chained to our chairs and the glowing objects in our hands while true, embodied life carries on without us, unwitnessed and unremembered.

What is true, and can we handle the truth? These remain difficult questions, no easier to answer now than in Plato's time. Despite all the knowledge society has accumulated, we may be less able to see through the shadows and murk than ever before—drowning in information while starving for wisdom, mistaking the shadow play for substance. The message threaded through the December holidays offers a counterweight to this confusion: light will shine in the darkness. Only light can pierce the inky black of the cave with its deceptive versions and watered-down truths.

Perhaps that's why we still gather in sanctuaries on Christmas Eve, why we still light candles and sing old hymns that our grandparents knew by heart. In an age of infinite shadows and endless projections, we need these moments of shared presence—real bodies in real space, real voices rising together, real light flickering against real darkness. The truth we're seeking might not be found on any screen, but in the warmth of another hand holding a candle beside ours, in the catch of emotion in our father's favorite carol, in the stubborn insistence that we are more than shadows on a wall.

Calm Rising

"Calm rising through change and through storm" — "Fair Harvard," Harvard traditional alma mater

In "Fair Harvard," which I remember only in fragments from a sleep-deprived commencement many decades ago, the university positions itself as the guiding light that inspires calm rising. In my adult life, I've discovered a different north star—my family and friends provide that steady beacon, that support when trouble arrives uninvited. My husband and my adult children, in particular, offer strong shoulders and a steady hand when I stumble into one of life's deeper potholes.

Through the skinned knees and serious illnesses, the slights from friends and bad swim meets, the difficult assignments I've navigated with Rob's help over the past twenty-four years, I never anticipated how swift the turning would be—these children we nourished and guided pivoting to become steadfast for us. When Aden, William, and Daniel were home at Thanksgiving, I found myself blindsided by the kaleidoscope of ages I could see in their faces, caught in memories of their toddler selves even as they chided me for purchasing the "spicy" version of Incohearent (an accident, I swear!).

The boys had a field day with Incohearent's not-so-appropriate cards, which they refused to let me see. William would hold one up to Daniel with mock disbelief—"can you believe this?"—and Daniel would roar with laughter even as William doubled over himself. They deemed five or six cards allowable for my delicate sensibilities and tucked the rest away, still chuckling at my maternal folly. The teasing felt tender, a sign of how the power dynamics had shifted—they were protecting me now, deciding what I could handle.

When the good-natured ribbing and laughter subsides, they remain my best friends and fiercest defenders. After I endured a terrible week—the kind where I woke each day to an elevated heart rate and sick stomach—Aden appeared on Saturday to check on me, even staying to make dinner for the four of us while I huddled on the couch in my pajamas, grateful to be relieved of duty. William called from New York amidst a crushing work schedule and holiday festivities, then called again the next day just to check in, his voice a lifeline across the miles. Daniel and a friend made sugar cookies last night, filling the kitchen with the scent of vanilla and butter, their laughter drifting through the house like music.

I don't know what I've done in this life or past lives to merit such remarkable children. When I was wrestling through tough days with three young ones under the age of seven—the endless laundry and sleepless nights, the tantrums and traumas—I never would have believed how the tables would turn, how quickly the protected would become the protectors. William returns home Sunday night for Christmas, and I find myself counting down with the anticipation of a child on Christmas Eve. Having everyone under one roof, celebrating that most sacred of family holidays together—this is the calm rising I never knew to hope for, the gift that makes every difficult year worthwhile.