24 August 2020

from Augustine and the Fundamentalist's Daughter, chapter 5, Staying Is Nowhere (Margaret R. Miles)

After my first divorce, when I was poor and alone, I learned to console myself by thinking of people who were rich and happy in love.  Remembering this condition, recognizing its actual existence somewhere in the world, made me happy too.  To imagine those feelings was to participate in them.  That learning, over forty years ago, still helps me when I feel anguish over my inability to help my son, and suffer from the irony that I have spent my life teaching other people's children.  But I can help others' children, and so I do.  And I hope that, in the broader generosity of the universe, there will be someone who can help my son.  I endeavor to rest in the knowledge of this"enough", enough to go around, enough for all, if we will only cease trying to stipulate from whom/where it must come, but simply wait with confidence and accept with gratitude.

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