Editor’s Note: This week’s guest contributor is Mark Docken, a neighbor, friend and retired pastor. He provides a much-needed look at how to take in all the pain in our current world and not lose our joy and hope. The attacks in Iran and escalation of war over the last week intensify this need.

“It’s a crummy world out there, and if you don’t know it, we’ll give you a field trip.  It’s a beautiful world out there, and if you don’t know it, we’ll give you a field trip.  When I wake up, I’m not sure if I’m called to save it, or savor it. I stretch that tension– until life sings.” (unknown source)

Yes, it’s a crummy world out there. What’s even more concerning is that so much of the “crumminess” is becoming acceptable. The notion that only power has any worth seems to be a permissible way to live and see the world. The exalting of individual rights disregards the common good. Caustic, vulgar, demeaning speech has become acceptable and even humorous. The decision to engage in violence and war is too easily made and deemed acceptable.

Yes, I wake up often in the morning wondering what in my life and my world I will have to wrestle with today in efforts to “save” the world. 

But I am getting better about waking up and savoring the world. Pema Chödrön, in her The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World describes a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there. She climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass, so she looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly.

Now let me quickly say, that I trust and believe that there is all-present love at the core of reality that is more real, even if less visible, than any tigers. This Love holds us and the future and is at work in this present moment, even when I see no signs of it. In that trust, I am truly able to enjoy the strawberries of life. 

There are so many delicious strawberries in every moment: our children, our loved ones, a flower, a tree, the sun, water, the morning breeze, the rain, our beautiful human body that has been hosting our soul for so many years, our eyes, our food. The list goes on and on.

Yes, I am getting better about waking up and savoring the strawberries.

This is not to down play the tigers in the world. This is not to ignore that for many there seem to be no strawberries. To recognize that, to see that, to work against those tigers, is also what it means to be present in the moment. 

In the end it is about stretching that tension of savoring and wrestling until life sings. For me, Life sings in the tension of “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth…Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5 – commonly  referred to as the Beatitudes). 

Life sings in that constant tension of suffering and joy, brokenness and healing, injustice and righteousness.  We seek not to escape into one, or despair in the other, but to hold the tension and know that life can still sing.  

A favorite Taizé chant I like to sing is “Within our darkest night, you kindle a fire that never dies away, never dies away.”  

In the tension of our darkest night and a kindling light, life sings.