This is a precious gain that comes with loss. This is a tender sweetness that comes with grief: appreciation.

shock and denial, bargaining, anger, and depression. Ideally, depression eventually recedes and leaves us in a place of acceptance.

Zinn presents me with a different notion of victory and a different choice entirely. My real choice is between Team Cruelty (or Team Apathy or Team Selfishness or Team Indifference) and Team Wisdom, Courage, and Kindness.

First is the survival committee. This is the complex part of me that evolved long ago in fish and reptiles and has been passed up the evolutionary tree, further evolving through mammals and primates to humans. The survival committee’s headquarters are in my brain stem and cerebellum. Its primary job is to keep me alive at least long enough to

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember

We feel this doom because we are awake, at least partially awake. The more we wake up, the worse we feel. It’s so tempting to fall back to sleep. No wonder certain politicians hate the idea of being “woke.”

Poetry and the arts—like the right kind of prayer—can help us to stay with grief long enough to feel its sweetness, long enough for the sweetness and grief to deepen our sensitivity to the exquisite agony and ecstasy that we call appreciation, praise, love … and life. We will find or write and recite the poems and prayers that resonate most deeply

Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann captures the relevance of grief in a time of doom: grief, he says, is the counter to denial.3

You’ve probably never heard of the Plymouth Brethren, but if you’ve ever heard of “the Rapture,” you have our heritage to thank. (You’re very welcome.)