There’s something about living in dark times that makes all the small movements of a life so much more precious. This morning, I go through my usual small rituals of starting the day – rise up out of dreams, pat my hair into place, feed the dog, pocket treats and my phone, walk out into the new green day. I note birds who flush up out of the water, and what herbs are blooming along the trail. Pick a few mulberries from feral trees near the river, then go home for tea.

I reach into cabinets, into the fridge for cream, and through all of these tiniest habitual chores I am aware of the thin quiet undemanding breath of the Holy that flows in and through me – through every tiny movement – breathing me, flowing in and out of me, nothing dramatic, just the Mystery, living in my skin, in my thoughts, in my breath.

I sit outside for a while, the sun warming my feet, a hummingbird coming and going between trees and the feeder. A couple of lizards climb from leaf to leaf nearby. The caterpillars steadily, quietly, strip leaves from the last of the Milkweed plants. A little breeze stirs in the woods.

These are the things that get me through. Sometimes, I have to take a break from grief to remember the quiet holiness of the world – the gentle, continual throbbing of a life, even as it is assaulted all around us.

In the shadow of the Virus, time moves more slowly – sometimes, it doesn’t seem to move at all. I have nowhere to go. I am quieter. My body relaxes in a way it hasn’t for a long time. Who cares if all I do in one whole day is walk the dog, read a not-quite-interesting book? Or send my daughters, who live far away, photos of the new bright hibiscus that is blooming in the yard? Who cares if I just amble through my day? Who cares if the squirrels have ganged up at the seed-feeder, and are squabbling? They’ll work it all out.

These days, all that is horrendous breaks us open, and all that isn’t horrendous becomes Light. We will find out way through the darkness not with our eyes, but with our Hearts.

Over the years with my own experience of loss, I’ve grown to think of it as a kind of “dark night of the soul” – a spiritual term coined by St. John of the Cross as he wrote about the soul’s approach to the Divine. My understanding of the term is that, in the soul’s journey toward union with the Holy, God’s light shines so intensely on the soul, in an attempt to purify it of all attachments and identities, that the soul experiences intense, deep darkness. Everything that was believed, depended upon, sure, is stripped away. Personal identity, the religious practices that one found so comforting, long-held beliefs – all are emptied out. And the soul is left bereft – forced toward the only true Light – the Divine. It’s a wrenching time. But it paves the way for a deepening of soul, and increases one’s capacity to bear the Holy. And to Love.

In the same way, I believe that loss is a kind of psycho-spiritual dark night. And whether it’s personal, or shared with the whole world, as it is now in the Virus Times, in the Darkness, in uncertainty, we are broken open, swamped with Mystery, ultimately forced to let go. We face the brutal Nothingness, what Buddhist monk Pema Chodron might call the Emptiness. And as that happens, something changes in us. As our hearts are broken, our body-mind-spirit begins to remember, to know, that love is All. We are transformed, whether we are ready or not.

There will be many kinds of “dark nights” in our lives – aging, or physical or emotional illness we suffer through that alter our sense of stability in the world. No matter how emotionally or financially or socially or intellectually comfortable we are, something will bring us down. Things will fall apart.

But as Chodron notes, “Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”

Lately, I am learning about letting go, and about being transformed. In the darkness, everything rises up to its incandescence. So here I am – on this gorgeous day -slipping through another cycle of worry and sickness, of beauty and small joys, of suffering and of healing, of waiting and working and hope.

May all be blessed. May we all rise up to the Light. May all be well.