The tag line for my blog could also be my life’s theme:

Solid joys, deep sorrows, aggressive hope.

Last year a persistent, present grief pressed down my heart. I knew, though, that I couldn’t abandon joy. Grief would need to make room for a roommate: joy was moving in. They would have to cohabit.

I remembered that metaphor as I read this line from an early C.S. Lewis poem:

Be as the Living ones that know
Enormous joy, enormous woe.

The poems are in Spirits in Bondage, a collection of 40 poems written by Lewis between the ages of 16 and 19.