From the Fire There Was Brilliance

I have clung to faith in ways I'd never imagined. But given the circumstances we face ourselves in, an economic crisis that reaches across oceans, that affects allies as well as the US, it is faith in myself and in my boss and my job that keeps me sane. At any moment there is a part of me that is afraid of losing my job, of friends and family losing theirs, and of masses of people living in poverty and crime. 

Maybe it's true, what they say: that in times of great distress and trouble, we find ourselves growing strong of heart and of mind, of gaining fortitude in strides and by revolutionizing technologies and ways of life. Maybe it is true, that God grants us difficulties so that we might better ourselves. 

I've heard that for many years, the whole concept that without the crosses we bear, we'd never achieve levels of greatness; that we'd never reach to be better than ourselves. Jesus had his cross, but without it, He never would have shown us magnificent compassion, or so the story goes. It's really the story of the Phoenix: that our greatest moment comes at our rebirth---after we smolder to ashes, burn to nothing, we rise anew; a bird of firey magnificence. 

I hope for three things. 1) That we do learn from this crisis, that we do strive to be better and do become better. 2) That by being better, by rising to the ideals of the best that the human spirit has to offer, that we stay with that brilliance in good times and in bad. 3) That none of us have to burn all the way down to embers before we can fly on wings of gold.