I owe you some cheer this morning.

I believe cheer can ALWAYS be found. Even in Moldova.

My friends Brett and Shelly served in the Peace Corps in Moldova and tell me it has been consistently rated the most "depressing country in which to live." I have a hard time believing it is worse than a place like Somalia where civil warfare, collapsed governance, and famine wreaks havoc. But, supposedly, it does not hold a candle.

In all of the chaos, I continue to be awed by the magnificence of human resilience. I know some folks who have received rough news lately. Rough. Devastating. Fill in your own adjective. And in the wake I have seen these very same people rise up to seize life a bit like a lion with its prey. They ravage it. Ravish. Ravage. Both. They receive its goodness and its trouble a bit like a bridge grasping the earth with its fingers and toes, bearing up over the chasms below.

Over the weekend Clark and I took time to play- really play. We ran around Green Lake under a bright, warm sun. We learned how to paddle board and went to the movies (this picture of Matthew McConaughey and his girlfriend really gives you a sense of EXACTLY what Clark and I looked like when we paddled). We went to church and met Angie and her kids at the park. My friends Peter and Cheryl sent me a gift in the mail and in their gesture reminded me that we live life in community for a reason. In community, we remind one another of what is true and what is good and what is hilarious and what is beautiful.

Remembering the sweetness of life in the midst of chaos is good medicine. And when you cannot do that, you must read Billy Collins poems instead.

Forgetfulness, by Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.