{"id":84,"date":"2010-12-31T07:33:53","date_gmt":"2010-12-31T15:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/amusingamma\/?p=84"},"modified":"2010-12-31T07:33:53","modified_gmt":"2010-12-31T15:33:53","slug":"one-step-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/amusingamma\/2010\/12\/one-step-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"One Step Enough"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This week between Christmas and New Year has felt extraordinarily gloomy to me\u2026.like John Henry Newman\u2019s \u201ccircling gloom.\u201d Was it the five straight days of rain that came down in Southern California where it \u201cnever\u201d rains? or the pain of the people I know who are suffering so severely with disease, surgery and loss during this \u201cmost wonderful time of the year\u201d? Maybe it\u2019s the memories of the way Christmas used to be, when I was a child, when I had children at home, or in my imagination. I know that the pronouncements of political and religious pundits of culture have done nothing to improves the darkness; almost everything I read or look at seems at best incomplete, and at worst shallow or trivial. I also confess that I am beleaguered by the mass and pitch of the end-of-the year requests for donations; all of them have a degree of worthiness, all of them are critical to those who make them, all of them can make a difference. I don\u2019t know how to choose, and the guilt just mounts up.<\/p>\n

So as I take the turn into a new calendar year, how do I navigate the gloom?<\/p>\n

I have remembered this week that the hymn writer helped\u00a0 me: Newman in his poem tells God that he is not asking to to see the \u201cdistant scene\u201d ahead, but one step at a time was enough for him. The big picture often increases the gloom. The year end \u201c10 Most\u201d lists somehow add to my despair. But one step, one gift, one word, one thing necessary can begin to turn my mourning in to dancing, as it piles up on top of the another. And so I as I ready to turn the page on the calendar, I remember where I have found daily or hourly the steps that are enough to lead to joy.<\/p>\n