When I was younger I would often write myself short job descriptions. I was thinking out loud about what might be worth hanging a life on, a life I was willing to sign my name to:-Create spaces where good things can happen.
-Give the world something beautiful, some gift of gratitude, no matter how insignificant or small.
-Write love letters to the whole world.
-Build fires outdoors, and lift a glass and tell stories, and listen, and laugh, laugh, laugh. (Karin says I’m still working on this one. She thinks I still need to laugh more, especially at
her jokes, puns and witty asides.)
-Flip a breaker and plunge the farm into darkness so that the stars can be properly seen.
-Do not squander afflictions.
-Own the longing, the non-negotiable need to “praise the mutilated world.”
-Find the music.
I still crave the extravagant gesture, the woman spilling a year’s wages on the feet of Jesus, the rarest perfume, washing his feet and drying them with her hair, a gesture so sensual it left the other men in the room paralyzed with criticism, analysis, theoretical moral concern - for what - the poor? Or was it just misdirected outrage in light of the glaring poverty of their own imaginations?...
Music and art and writing: extravagant, essential, the act of spilling something, a cup running over…
The simultaneous cry of, You must change your life, and Welcome home.
0 comments:
Post a Comment