My dear one:

During a tough season it’s easier to wish it gone, and think nothing is good. That’s not true. You don’t have to make the good things mean more than they do or scrape up false positivity. You don’t HAVE to do anything, but there are some things to choose. You can choose, for example, to see the small beauty when the larger picture is hard to focus on.

Through hardship our attention is often reduced to the small, small details of life and we gain an appreciation we never had before for a mug of tea in one’s own kitchen, and a clump of daffodils in view out this kitchen window. We gain a sort of likeness to our creator, who sees when a sparrow falls and knows things like how many hairs are on our heads.

These things bring us a gratitude with tiny little seeds of prayers that will grow into big trees, and a hope that no longer depends on what is seen or can embrace us.

You don’t have to have big joy if you just can’t manage it right now. Remember the widow in Jesus’ story with two coins, and how Jesus honored her for giving everything she had? I know we think of that as a story about giving everything to Jesus, but there’s something else the story is telling us. There’s something there for the people who are down in it, really in the @#$%, and who have almost nothing left. They are at rock bottom.

Suffering often lies to us. It says that things must improve, visibly or invisibly, so that we may deserve joy. That somehow we must pull up by our bootstraps in order to enter the Holy Places. It says we must be able to bring more and better. Jesus says this very differently. He says we must bring all. Those two things are worlds apart.

To me it is one of the startling beauties in the Gospel. I don’t know of any other religion which does not make our well-being dependent on prosperity or suffering. Instead, our well-being is dependent on Jesus’ sacrifice, and whether or not we choose to surrender everything to someone who loves us so much that he would die for people who mostly ignore him.

It is for this love tonight that I give you my two small joys. Two photos which helped me when I was lonely tonight. It is a small thing to give you, but I give them with my whole heart. They were photographed in loneliness, but they shall go forth in joy.

I wish you joy.

Not joy dependent on a life that only goes the way of no pain, no hardship, and no loneliness; it would be foolishness to wish this upon you after seeing how suffering brings forth a beauty unlike anything I could imagine, or even understand.

Your hardship has purpose. Your suffering is not in vain. This loneliness will teach you to enjoy the keenness and refinement of relationship better than the one who has never learned what it means to give up everything for love.

Open your hands tonight — the grimy, hot and sweaty hands that have been holding on to the little bit of something you have.

Give it away. Come out of hiding, dear heart. I only have two small joys to give you tonight as a gift, but I would purchase you the world if I could. This isn’t really about the world though, this is about how much I love you. The daffodils and tea are just a silly ruse so I could talk to you for awhile. I just can’t bear to see either of us stay hanging on to loneliness when it is all we have, instead of giving it away.

I think Jesus is waiting for us. He won’t laugh. He won’t mock that we’re hanging on to a two bit piece of loneliness which seems like life and death.

I’ll go first. I’m writing a book on loneliness. Even though I feel as if anything I can bring to the topic is worth about two cents. Even though people smarter and wiser than I have written about it.

I once spoke to a friend with a lovely daughter who was going through a hard shadow land with her, and she said she did not know if anyone in the world had ever gone through this place. She was so lonely. Alone. Isolated. Yet she had what I thought would be the antidote to my loneliness. She was married with kids. You know? She could be held in her loneliness. Do you know how many times I’ve felt this lack? And yet, to feel this loneliness even while being held is almost worse than mine.

I spoke to another friend with great talents. Gut wrenchingly lonely. Drugs. Sex.

And here we are bleeding out behind walls because we are ashamed of bringing our two pieces of small coins. It takes courage to step out, and even more to open the door. In this current time of talk about vulnerability there are still very few people who actively practice this.

Who are willing to give up all for the sake of love.

Inside the shadowland of loneliness we need to know that real people exist. That’s why I’m here. I’m here with you. Feel my hand. Remember the daffodils. We’ll come to those presently. We’ll have a cup of tea when this is all over.

Ok love? I promise.

Bring whatever pieces of loneliness or grief or angst or depression or hardship you have squished into those clenched hands and let’s go on an adventure. Bring it all.

-Kumquat

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