I still mourn. I can’t get that massacre in Aurora, Colorado off my mind.

One day at a time, sweet Jesus, like Christy Lane sang. I looked up her name. Other people sang the song too.

It feels bad to write today. The news is bad. I’m sitting here feeling sad and lost and scared for myself and the world.

I Surfed the Net. One thing led to another again and I found lyrics to a song the late Laura Nyro wrote many years ago, back in the 1960s. History really repeats itself, only worse. Even then, before this massacre in Colorado, the late Ms. Nyro wrote a song called “Save the Country.” That song says, “Come on people, come on children, come on down to the Glory River, Gonna wash you up and wash you down, Gonna lay the devil down, Gonna lay that devil down.” Who knows everything a songwriter thinks, but those lyrics seem to fit for today. Laura Nyro gave us that song and many other songs. We all have a song of some kind. But everything seems sad today anyway. It’s better to be sad when bad things happen than to be indifferent, according to the late rabbi and philosopher and activist Abraham Joshua Heschel, when he wrote about God‘s prophets of old.

Today, when I walked by my friend’s place to return that food container, he told me to pitch it up. He caught it and smiled. He saved me a trip up the stairs and that smile helped. I feel sad off and on today, for reasons personal and national and universal. Can you feel it too? Just look at the news, or not look. How can we not look and not feel sad?

Thank you for sitting here with me. It’s okay to feel sad for now. When something terrible happens, I’ve heard you just do the next good thing you can do. We have to qualify it now—do the good thing. Right now it seems right to mourn the sad things, but not to give up on life and the good things. As long as there’s God, it’s not hopeless, because God is eternal. God’s been there and back and out there too. God is the great I AM. Pastor Joseph Prince says God covers the past, the present and the future. God never leaves us alone.

So, we just have to do the next good thing and hope against hope. I looked that up too. It means hope when there’s no reason to hope. When nothing makes sense, that’s when we’re supposed to walk by faith, not by sight. I’m gropin’ around in the dark here. Let’s hold hands. I mean it. Let’s hold on to each other.