We moved over the weekend. Because there’s not enough disruption in the world, my family and I decided to spend weeks packing up all our belongings and trucking them about four miles down the road to a different domicile. Today is the first “real” day in the new place–first day back to work, first day to make coffee, first day for all the firsts, only done in a way that the reigning set of local and global circumstances is contorting. For example, when the day comes that I commute to work, that, too, will be new, from here.
The new keeps coming, and boy is it a strain. A hopeful orientation interprets the stain as labor pains and chooses to find new birth in all the disruption, but in order for that to be truly hopeful and not mere optimism or sentimentality, I think we have to reckon with the strain. Birth is overpowering strain, both for the birther and the birthed. There is joy in the strain, but also danger, and at the intersection of the two is the miracle of new life.
Now push.
YoRocko! 
This is powerfully said, Rocky. It reminds me of the usual reaction of “the birthed” — sobbing! I wish I could remember who I read who said that the cries aren’t necessarily getting oxygen, they’re tears about all the disruptions in the environment. All the best to you in your new surroundings.