A young Augustine experienced this sort of disaster, an experience of loss where we lose our stars and the entire cosmos dims to a jaded meaninglessness. But looking back, the older Augustine would say that his younger self hadn’t yet learned the art of losing and hadn’t yet imagined how loss is reframed by resurrection. “‘Happy is the person who loves you,’” Augustine prays, “and his friend in you, and his enemy because of you. Though left alone, he loses none dear to him; for all are dear in the one who cannot be lost.”18 The art of losing is not easy; for mortals, it amounts to an acrobatic
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