I am an older woman and, as I have been living on my own for many years now, the restriction to "stay at home" and observe "physical distancing” is not impacting on my daily life as much as it has on many others. I thought I was doing OK with it all until, one day, as I was reading about the sheer numbers and the impact on people here in Canada and around the globe, I fell to my knees and wept and wept for all the sadness and suffering in the world.

A day or two later, as I was on my daily solitary walk, I stopped to watch a little boy in his new blue rubber boots splash, gleefully, back and forth in a muddy brown puddle at the side of the street. For him, there was no global pandemic - there were only these new blue rubber boots, and this glorious muddy brown puddle. Such pure joy lifted my heart. I have been feeling that these uncertain times demand that we hold, simultaneously, the deepest paradoxes of life - dark and light, sadness and joy, suffering and healing.