Lately I’ve been so inspired by artists–people putting sounds and words and images and action to the things we feel and know and want to know.  Sometimes things we don’t want to know.  Bobby posted a link to a really amazing performance of Pink’s "Dear Mr. President," and I cried much of the way through.  Natasha Bedingfield’s Unwritten makes me cry, too–tears that are all about hope and joy and a deep, deep yearning.  Watch a video here.  Or just read the lyrics.

And there’s this artist, in Columbia, making guitar’s out of guns, instruments of destruction into instruments of peace and construction.  "Violence fears love because it is stronger," he says in the interview.  "Violence fears my voice because it goes beyond death."  Gah!  So beautiful.

I could list hundreds and hundreds more.  And these are musicians, but what about painters, sculptors, writers, poets–the host of souls doing the frivolous work of prophecy?  The "not-a-real-job" of waking us up, lifting us up, agitating us toward action? 

Who can say art is an extra in this life, an added film of icing on all the real stuff?  I say art is essential.  Like the heart that keeps our blood alive.

I’m sick this weekend, tired and congested and wanting to curl up in bed.  N and I are swapping childcare duties, though, taking our turns at work-beyond-home, so here I am with a very sweet boy at my feet.  No sleeping right now for me.

I’ve been listening to Jewel all afternoon, feeding and changing and lounging with E in between, and am inspired again by her spirit.  I particularly love Life Uncommon.

Lend your voices only to sounds of freedom
No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from
Fill your lives with love and bravery
And you shall lead a life uncommon

It’s a rally to set down the chains that keep you living small.  The bravery piece is an acknowledgement that living fully, in the best sense of that word, will not be without opposition.  And my thought is opposition comes from inside of us just as much as from the outside.

Come on you unbelievers, move out of the way
There is a new army coming and we are armed with faith

If each of us is made of different voices, different people at our inner table, her "move aside" could be spoken to the voices inside of us that would thwart a robust life.  Isn’t that a great phrase?  I want to live robustly!  I want to use my words to bring life.  I want to stand at my own life’s threshold like a superhero, muscles flexed, fist held up and out above my head.  Haha!!!  Take that, nihilism!  Watch me live!!!

It’s moments like these, when my heart swells to bursting, that become my buoys in life’s day-to-dayness.  The trail markers that keep me going where I want to go, even as my feet are killing me and I’m sick of the food I brought and…I’m wiping poopy bottoms in between blowing my own nose.

Life is real.  Even the uncommon kind.  For some reason that’s okay with me right now.  For me right now, right this second, love and bravery have to be about the quality I bring to loving E.  Beyond that, we’ll just see. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go blow my nose.

here

I love the idea that death doesn’t have the final say.  That sometimes our biggest losses end up part of some tremendous gain.  I’m no militant optimist, and I won’t try to smooth over pain by saying it’s all for some greater good, all part of a bigger plan—for us or anyone else.  Sometimes pain is just pain, I think.  But I can speak to my experience.

I can talk about the darkest, darkest night that was my early twenties.  About wanting to be dead. 

About having no more tears to cry, and then crying more.  No sense of self, and then watching more unravel.

I can talk about a longing that goes so deep there isn’t any bottom to it.  Fear of every kind.

Death.  That’s what my winter felt like.  Or maybe worse than death, because death seems a lot more kind. 

I’m not in winter now, though.  Seasons changed, and the death in my life is being undone.  And I almost hate saying it because I wouldn’t wish death on a single soul, but I swear the joy I feel in this season has a lot to do with the depth of my suffering in the last.  Andrea posted a Gibran quote the other day that says this so eloquently:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives? When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Sorrow is the greater." But I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your head board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. So you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. Only when you are empty are you at a standstill and balanced."

I don’t know whether Jesus rose from the dead.  What I do know is the story’s true.  The meaning of it.  Death and awfulness are real to the very core.  Past that, even, beyond what anyone anywhere should ever have to endure.  And resurrection happens.  Hope won’t stay dead.  Sometimes it’s broader than a single life, but I think it’s deeply true. 

I think it’s true that those who suffer have a great, great capacity for joy.

Last night I dreamt I was a student at some prestigious university, fast approaching finals.  I opened my binder to get a sense for how to prepare, and realized I had completely forgotten to attend one of my classes.  All semester.  I realized my notes for my other classes were mostly gone, and that the few notes left were only doodles, little notes to myself having nothing to do with course content.  I flipped and flipped through that binder, willing something to change.  What did show up were a bunch of voting sheets I had agreed a month previous to tally for a club I was in, and had completely forgotten to tally.  The dream went on like this.

I’m not sure what triggered this dream, whether my entry into book revision mode, and the accompanying pressure to get other things published along the way (…the feeling like I should already have much more published), or the fact that I went to a play last night (or stood in line for a play, rather; it ended up being sold out) that was to be introduced by a famous author, and the woman in line behind me asked if I’ve ever read his stuff, and I have, a little, but can’t for the life of me remember the names of what I’ve read, or the content.  But regardless of why the dream came now, it’s a good picture of some of the yuck that pops up in me sometimes.  This nagging fear that I’m not prepared for some important thing, some thing I have no business not being ready for.  The fear that the tasks I so heartfully do aren’t the right ones, and I’ll wake someday to that fact.

So when I opened Seeker’s sight today, and read the following poem, it was just what I needed to hear.  Mary Oliver has such a good effect on me.  She makes me feel more comfortable being me (and me means knowing and doing only what I know and do), blessed to be nothing other.  Thanks for posting this, Seeker.

The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

But this one is WAY more exciting to report on, because it’s MINE!  I finished a draft of my novel!!!  Yeeehaawwwww!!!!  I wrote a note to a bunch of friends saying this feels like a pregnancy, and finishing this draft is like getting to see an ultrasound of the baby.  There’s still months of revisions to go before the birth will actually happen, but this right here is milestone enough to set me dancing!  And this kind of pregnancy is the very best kind for actually jumping around in the middle of.  (I tried dancing with joy one time late in my pregnancy with Elijah and quickly realized why people don’t do that sort of thing.  Not twice, anyway.)

I am a very happy duck.

Friday it was bright in the morning after a long stretch of rain.  I went walking for the first time in months (foot problems crippled me that long), cleaned house, washed clothes.  Elijah was in a great mood and endorphins from my walk were doing wonders for my own.

But then it got windy outside.  Dark clouds moved in.  I was tired from my work, but was hoping to get some errands run before realizing Elijah was tired too, and probably couldn’t keep it together in public like I was hoping I could do.  So I tried putting him down, and he wailed, and I tried rocking him, and he wailed, and I tried letting him wail for a bit, and he wailed.  I finally got him up, feeling tired enough myself for it to be two in the morning, wondering where in the world our day’s joy had gone.  The house felt bad, dark in ways beyond the sheets of rain outside.  I never know how much that kind of darkness is inside of me, and how much is something beyond myself.

So I put Elijah on his changing table and started making up a song about light and love, and how both could fill the whole place up as far as I was concerned, until E was changed and loaded up to pick up N, who wasn’t keen on riding his bike in a downpour.

We got there early. I parked in front of a meadow where weeds and trees had grown into a sea of green.  Elijah’s mood had turned sweet, and we sat there together, him babbling in the back seat, while sun broke through.  That sea turned bright, and as rain kept falling, I thought I heard the sound of green things drinking.  I thought I heard guzzling, and knew, again, that even when there’s darkness, outside or in my soul, there are these: jeweled meadows drinking rain.  Gladness.  Growth. 

Death and life are happening, and maybe knowing that is what makes death more bearable.  Maybe watching for the life, and moving toward it, are all the vocation I could wish for.

I’ve been meaning to tell you what I thought of Gilead all week, and am finally in a space to do so.

I really loved it.  Especially the first half.  I loved the honesty of the narrator, and the humility.  The way he told you what his weaknesses are, and the things that fill him up.  The way, like any of us, he couldn’t tame his jealousies or resentments like he wanted—or his tongue, even when he knew the ones he burned with it did not deserve the burning.  The book is a rambling letter he writes at the end of his life to his young son.

I also love the ways he deals with religion.  The narrator is a minister, and comes from a line of ministers, but even in all of that history, all of the holy wars within his family and between denominations and even races that he talks about, his take on his vocation is fresh, is earnest.  It makes it sound like an honor to be in his position.  He’s one of those people who’s read all sorts of things, all sorts of angles on God and faith, theism, atheism, and holds it all loosely together somehow.  He’s read enough for his convictions to be gentle, lived enough for his faith to be strong.  I’m not religious, but I could totally appreciate his views.  I was endeared to them.

One passage I particularly liked was this one.  He’s just written how he and a childhood friend baptized a litter of kittens.

I still remember how those warm little brows felt under the palm of my hand.  Everyone has petted a cat, but to touch one like that, with the pure intention of blessing it, is a very different thing.  It stays in the mind.  For years we would wonder what, from a cosmic viewpoint, we had done to them.  It still seems to me to be a real question.  There is a reality in blessing, which I take baptism to be, primarily.  It doesn’t enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is a power in that.  I have felt it pass through me, so to speak.  The sensation is of really knowing a creature, I mean really feeling its mysterious life and your own mysterious life at the same time.  I don’t wish to be urging the ministry on you, but there are some advantages to it you might not know to take account of if I did not point them out.  Not that you have to be a minister to confer blessing.  You are simply much more likely to find yourself in that position.  It’s a thing people expect of you.  I don’t know why there is so little about this aspect of the calling in the literature. (23)

A little later he’s still reflecting on blessing, and writes this beautiful scene:

That mention of Feuerbach and joy reminded me of something I saw early one morning a few years ago, as I was walking up to the church.  There was a young couple strolling along half a block ahead of me.  The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet.  On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running, the girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn’t.  It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth.  I don’t know why I thought of that now, except perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash.  I wish I had paid more attention to it.  My list of regrets may seem unusual, but who can know that they are, really.  This is an interesting planet.  It deserves all the attention you can give it. (28-29)

Amen, dear sir.

A book I well recommend.

Anyone out there read Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead?  What’d you think?