(no subject)

[brooksmoses]

Resharing from my dear friend Elena Rose (aka "Little Light"), on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/burnlittlelight/posts/761138051178):

My loves, life is full of losing, and the price of caring is grief, eventually, always. And all of it is worth it.

I know a lot of us have been feeling this year like the decks are getting cleared of people we admired and looked up to, friends, family, cultural icons, just in such a time of trial when we need inspiration and hope and beauty more than ever.

I have been telling myself this: the world is declaring to us just how much it needs us to be new sources of inspiration and hope and beauty. Nobody is going to do the job for us. Nobody is going to shine so bright that we don't have to learn to shine too. Nobody is going to be excellent for us. It's time for all of us to carry our corner of the sky. It's time for us all to light the lantern. It's time for all of us to find our footing and our grip and the place to put our weight.

When I got ordained in May, one of the strongest feelings I had was the overwhelming certainty that there was no more time for childish things. I found my place in the world of adults and vowed to be the person I was waiting for, with no more excuses. I declared myself grown and declared a direction to keep growing in and people to keep growing toward. I made a commitment to no more backwards, no more hiding, no more being small--to being consequential. It has been challenging, brutal, laced through with a fresh education in grief and endurance beyond any limits I thought I had. It has also been worth every moment, fulfilling and gorgeous and blazing with warmth, and in this cold season I have found myself more than once in tears of gratitude that I am able to help, that I know what I am for and have the chance to fulfill that purpose.

Each of us needs to be someone in the world. I found who that someone was for me and went all in. The world needs you, too, your particular self, awake and alive and in it. It needs what you know, what you make, what you do, what you nurture, what you care about. We would not have come together this way, all our stories, all our particularities and peculiarities, if it wasn't going to matter.

I insist that there will be generations to follow us. They will need heroes to look up to, too. Let's give them everything we've got.

Take heart, friends. Everything ends; nothing is over yet.