This summer – while on vacation and feeling vaguely sad – I read a marvelous essay by the contemporary writer Leslie Jamison. In it, Jamison wonders if we could allow ourselves to understand sadness “as something other than a feeling meant to be replaced,” if we could stop trying to cure sadness and instead allow that it might be beautiful.

In a funny way, it was the moment when I encountered the words Don’t panic in this latest rereading that I began to wonder if Adams’ book just might be a spiritual classic.

What do you do after an experience of desecration such as this? What, in particular, do we do as church?

Losing stuff drives me to distraction. I totally empathize with the characters in Jesus’ stories who search for things. Just like the woman who loses the coin and the shepherd who loses the sheep, when my keys go missing it’s hard for me to do much except to search and mutter.

What if we terminated our contract with silence around porn? And what if our neighbour’s moral help allowed us to live in a way that is more free, more joyous, more kind?

Ultimately, a wet floor and a bunch of dudes with power tools taking over our kitchen isn’t an especially big deal. And maybe that’s what makes this flood just the right metaphor for us: now and almost always, other folks have problems that make ours look pretty trivial.