Some days nothing works. Worse still it seems like everything I touch loses possibility. Options close. What to do… Crying is a legitimate response. More legitimate than turning the events into a story line of failure and despair. Staying out of this place is the work of sustainability. It happens, there are these runs of breakdown, everything from bursting cooking elements in old stoves to seemingly done deals gone South…the world and all its working parts are fragile. Relationships are most fragile of all.

Finding the courage to think well of yourself when everything you touch seems to break is the point of it all.

This is the surrender to what is. My ten-year-old son reminded me also of just how small our losses are compared with the billions of people living in the world without enough to eat. He is considering foregoing his own holiday gifts and giving a cow to a hungry boy somewhere in the world. When I am lost in despair, he says I am considering that cow… I thank him for reminding me of what it is that sustains us.