Photo credit: RVRich |
Let us live in the beauty of this very one
and only day, full of its glow, its honest dust and breadcrumbs. Let us live
with the bit of jam on the knife, with the bit of butter on the crust, with the
bit of tea left in the saucer from its sloshing, overfull cup. Let us slurp it
up, this life, despite the multitudinous accidents and violences, despite the
abuses, the scraping of knees, the battering of children: let us stand up to
these travesties with the courage of eyelashes pointed up and down, which is to
say, open eyes, and let us speak and act against them. And let us also embrace
the lovelinesses, the shooting stars and the unfurling herbs in pots on the
sill, the taste of chocolate on our tongues, or peaches and grapes, because if
we do not accept these singular shards of goodness in our lives, in our bodies,
in our senses, in our souls, then how will we be strong to stand up to the
ugliness? How will we have the wherewithal to keep our eyelashes, top and
bottom, from folding together in a tidy row, a curtain to the blank within our
own bodies while others beyond the curtain suffer?
I
am not advocating stoicism, or heroism, or any great and grand gestures: only
simple goodness, and courage to speak up. The world is a much more complicated
place than I can say. Its pages are palimpsests, printed again and again, so
that to read one line one must look past the others printed atop it, this way
and that. We should not pretend otherwise. We should not extract the single
lines and quote them out of context. But we also should not close the book.
Amen & amen!
ReplyDeleteYes. Thank you for sharing, Cindy!
ReplyDelete