It's Getting Late
Sometimes, I sit down to write filled with a love for the world that I can’t contain. Oh precious world and its moments of celestial tenderness! Just this afternoon, I was walking Otis across a ballfield, and closed my eyes and felt the clumps of grass beneath my soles, every step different, unique, perfect. It was cool and cloudy and the softball team was stretching nearby, gearing up for a jog, and the day heaved a huge sigh and said allllllriiiiiiiight.
You see: it’s always next to you, that space of infinite perfection, that limitless forgiveness, that capacity to love. When the mind is churning it seems so far, but really, it’s always right there, bursting with its gifts.
And sometimes, I sit down and it seems that the world has lost its bearings. We’ve sacrificed all our moral courage. We’ve become a nation of fear and fearmongers, and elect our leaders based on the energy of their lies. The future is fast approaching and holding in its hands the bill for our turbo-powered lifestyles and the homes we can no longer afford and our aging and the melting, melting ice.
Can I be honest? My heart feels heavy and bruised at such moments. Tears rise up and rain down, disappear in dark gutters. We’ve been given so much to protect and squandered it on minute, inconsequential victories. We’ve cut ourselves off from the source.
But the miracle: in the next breath, we can make, again, the decision to open ourselves to grace. To the grace of a ballfield, the grace of a friend saying hey-what-up, the grace of a walnut brownie, the grace of a wind blowing leaves around your ankles, the grace of a turning car’s headlights washing across your body, the grace of a rain puddle quivering in a breeze, the grace of a dog barking in happiness when you fill his supper dish, the grace of the one blind in the window that stands in opposition to the rest, the grace of a stranger smiling at your smile, the grace of a cool metal door pressing against your fingertips just about to give, the grace of a crumpled up paper chucked at a wastebasket bouncing off the rim and off the wall, bouncing, the grace of the color green, the grace of a…
Friend, if there’s one thing you get from enduring my ramblings, I hope it’s that.
Also: Do whatever you can to elect Barack.
You see: it’s always next to you, that space of infinite perfection, that limitless forgiveness, that capacity to love. When the mind is churning it seems so far, but really, it’s always right there, bursting with its gifts.
And sometimes, I sit down and it seems that the world has lost its bearings. We’ve sacrificed all our moral courage. We’ve become a nation of fear and fearmongers, and elect our leaders based on the energy of their lies. The future is fast approaching and holding in its hands the bill for our turbo-powered lifestyles and the homes we can no longer afford and our aging and the melting, melting ice.
Can I be honest? My heart feels heavy and bruised at such moments. Tears rise up and rain down, disappear in dark gutters. We’ve been given so much to protect and squandered it on minute, inconsequential victories. We’ve cut ourselves off from the source.
But the miracle: in the next breath, we can make, again, the decision to open ourselves to grace. To the grace of a ballfield, the grace of a friend saying hey-what-up, the grace of a walnut brownie, the grace of a wind blowing leaves around your ankles, the grace of a turning car’s headlights washing across your body, the grace of a rain puddle quivering in a breeze, the grace of a dog barking in happiness when you fill his supper dish, the grace of the one blind in the window that stands in opposition to the rest, the grace of a stranger smiling at your smile, the grace of a cool metal door pressing against your fingertips just about to give, the grace of a crumpled up paper chucked at a wastebasket bouncing off the rim and off the wall, bouncing, the grace of the color green, the grace of a…
Friend, if there’s one thing you get from enduring my ramblings, I hope it’s that.
Also: Do whatever you can to elect Barack.
posted by Josh at 6:30 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home