Beauty in Suffering

This is quite raw, and terribly personal. But because it is so raw and so personal, it is also painfully beautiful. 

My dear wife suffered a miscarriage almost six months ago. We've largely kept this to ourselves, but recently my wife felt that she needed to share her pain with others. Instead of suffering in silence, Anna felt that being open with her tragic experience could help others to feel some sort of solidarity (if not comfort) in the "fellowship" of suffering souls. Here it is:

"Mother (or, finally writing about my miscarriage five months later)"

Please read this, and then please pass it along to anyone who you think has a heart.

em·pa·thy

/ˈempəTHē/

1. the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

"Yet taught by time, 

my heart has learn'd to glow

For others' good, 

and melt at others' woe."

The Odyssey, Book XVIII, line 269 (Translation by Alexander Pope, 1725)

My Little Cosmos

I recently came across a series of pictures that made me re-think my relationship to the universe and how I feel about it. I've often felt awestruck by the enormity and beauty of space. However, by toying with photos of celestial objects, they can appear to be much smaller. These playfully-edited pictures changed my feelings from awe to something much more tender.

These paradigm-shifting pictures and the feelings they evoked reminded me of something I recently read by G.K. Chesterton. In this passage from Orthodoxy: The Romance of Faith (print, digital, and audio), Chesterton responds to the idea that the vastness of the universe should be overwhelming, reducing humanity to a state of trembling fear in the face of its enormity. He wrote:

"[If] a man chooses to have an emotion about the largeness of the world; why should he not choose to have an emotion about its smallness? It happened that I had that emotion. When one is fond of anything one addresses it by diminutives... [Some] people professed that the universe was [overwhelming]; but they were not fond of the universe. But I was frightfully fond of the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive. I often did so; and it never seemed to mind."

Like Chesterton, I now see the universe as something small enough that I can feel love for. As I look out into the night sky, I think I'll start addressing the universe as "my little cosmos."

See the entire album of these photos here.