“We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.”

Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion’s award-winning memoir focused on the year following her husband’s unexpected death, reminds us that mortality is part of life. She explains, “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” We all know those moments. When life changes in seismic ways. When the alchemy of our everyday shifts substance. When there is a before and an after. We know these changes happen in and to ourselves and others. We know there is no order of magnitude. We wrap them in soft blankets and bury them, or hold them close and rock them gently. We run from them, or stand our ground. We sit inside them like a great temple asking what is ours to learn, or burn them with a scorched earth heart.

These moments teach us. They teach us, as theologian and historian Kate Bowler reflects, “Life is beautiful. Life is hard.” They teach us that, ultimately, we are all on the same journey — to be seen and loved — and that sameness is a gift. They teach us the truth that seasons and tides and the sun understand — the moments of falling apart and coming back together are beautiful and hard. Years of magical thinking — years in which what we were, are, and will be reveal themselves to us with profound clarity — are sacred.