"If something as small and timid as a hummingbird can migrate hundreds of miles above an ocean to get to the nectar on the other side, then we too can rise above the heaviness of life to reach a sense of inner peace and joy.  Do we turn away?  Or do we face the tragedies of our life and the world head on because the only way out is through?  Ignorance is bliss until it isn’t.  Yet, how can we plunge into the deep while giving ourselves a liferaft, some levity, so that we do not harbor the heaviness of it all?  As the Talmud states, “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.  Do justly, now.  Love mercy, now.  Walk humbly, now.  You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”  Life is both tragic and beautiful, somehow our capacity for contradiction is endless.  May we sincerely acknowledge sorrow but not be destroyed by it.  Somehow, it is possible to hold, if just for a moment, the hard truths while ultimately choosing to focus on the sweeter things in life.  So, when we share time with our friends, family and community instead of grief we can resolve to give comfort and dare to in spite of everything, joy."