Once there was a great bombing, and I had my baby sister with me. I had Maria on my back and I was running back home, but I could not breathe, I could not swallow. I could not say anything. When I came home, mamika embraced me. She said, "Why are you so frightened?" That was such a balm to me. Her words still live inside me. She said, "All of us will meet anyway, even if they kill you. "There was such a strength for me in those moments. Through my mother's calm, unshakeable faith, God came to comfort me.
How do we hold both the magnificence and tragedy of the world, as if we stand at a threshold with Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings, looking in two directions? ...How do we find the way if we can't see around the bend? ...In our time of disturbance and radical change, we are crossing a threshold, a portal, or an unseen bridge from one world to another. It could be said that the bridge is either collapsing beneath us, or being made as we walk together...
~ from WILD FAITH by Geneen Marie Haugen (Garrison Institute blog entry)
