When a nation mourns, when a family grieves, when a boyfriend or girlfriend (or husband or wife) cries out in anguish — we cannot (and must not) run and hide in the past, or wish or dream to live in the future.... in a quieter place, during a more peaceful time.  Our responsibility — our human duty — is to deal with the present and to help ease the suffering.  To find a way, a mechansim, a process that helps bring comfort, and healing.  To find the courage and determination to seek-out doctors, nurses, teachers, rabbis, priests, pastors, imams, friends, relatives, parents, grandparents, .... healers, caregivers.  To discover the strength ... that reaches outward to all victims, to all wounded ... with care, and compassion. 

In our moments of pain, we cannot escape the present.  With absolute certainty .... we will struggle.  We will search for courage.  We will seek those who can help us cope, and heal.  But eventually, we will — we must — surrender .... "surrender to new meanings and new circumstances. "³  Joan Chittister reminds us .... "surrender is the crossover point of life.  It distinguishes who I was from who I have become ... Life, as I had fantasized it, is ended.  What is left is the spiritual obligation to accept reality so that the spiritual life can really happen in me."⁴

We will grieve, and grieve, and then grieve some more.  And the pain (at times) will seem insurmountable.  We will struggle in darkness and we will cry with despair ... until we surrender.  Until we shed everything in life but God.  And then ... at that moment when we are "sure of the absence of God, we actually become aware of the presence of God.  It is the paradox of faith .... I am reduced by misery [and mystery] to stop and look through the darkness to the light on the horizon that never changes ..... There is only one way out of struggle and that is by going into its darkness waiting for the light and being open to new growth ... Darkness becomes the incubator of light."⁵

From within our suffering, and struggle, and darkness — at that moment when we sense abandonment by God — we will, in the words of the Sufi Poet Jalal al-Din Rumi:

 Be a full bucket,
 drawn up the dark way of a well,
 then lifted out,
 into the light.

God — the Light that transforms all darkness — is our Divine Caregiver and Eternal Guide, present with us, always, ... in our suffering, in our struggle.  As Healer and Comforter, He is there .... waiting, patiently, in the heart of a friend — a friend who embraces and holds us with love, and hope, who extends a gentle, caring kiss to our cheek, who offers a soft, understanding shoulder to rest our weary eyes.  God is present in the Compassion of Humanity — in strangers who write notes of comfort, and in campus friends, teachers, and students who leave flowers, or light candles, at a makeshift memorial ... and who offer up words of support, and concern, and healing.