Sometimes life is hard. As you know, I’ve been harping a bit on this this month. Trying to stay faithful to Love and Peace when your heart is broken is a challenge. And you stay faithful by not forcing yourself to work on a bruised brain.

And broken hearts and bruised brains don’t mean that nothing else will happen. There’s no insurance for this, no moratorium on the numbers of blows that can fall. Yesterday, my favorite oldest cousin called to tell me that her former husband, the father of my “nieces” had killed himself. It’s a sad, ugly and brutal story.

If you’d have asked me if I would have been able to step up and do what was needed, I’d have told you nope. But when the call comes, you pick up the phone. And then you pick it up again and offer the girls your heart. The UUs sing that old spiritual, “There Is More Love, Somewhere.” And somewhere it is. Because it’s there when you need it. And it holds you up and it carries you along. If ever Deb were with me she was with me [i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) — thank you ee cummings] in the placing of that call. She loved those girls. She loved their girls. And so, in my grief, perhaps the love I got is the All Love and the love of Deb. Both girls said, “oh, we didn’t want to bother you.” But Love keeps swelling up and spilling out.

So there is more love, and even in the wasteland of grief, there are oases… and springs in the wilderness. Love. It leads us to Peace — because there’s more of that, too.