Lately, my days are filled with all the things I find most beautiful, most bracing, most filling.
© 2013 Warren Flick, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio
Over the Rhine‘s song “Let It Fall” is on repeat most days for me.
Have you been caring too much how this one ends?
You know it’s not the kind of fight that you lose or win.
When you’re down so low you feel the imprint of ground on skin,
look around. Breathe in.
Today, my dear friend Shawn wrote about going to their show last week, and I am filled with the joy and grace of their music through him.
Yesterday, I finished Marilynne Robinson’s book Lila, and while I’m still savoring it, trying to figure out what void it fills behind my ribs, I am letting the joy of the story soak into me.
Now, I’m sinking into the wit and wisdom of Anne Lamott’s Small Victories. Last night, P came in to check on me while I read in bed because he heard me laughing out loud.
‘I read your book,’ she said, and winked. ‘Maybe,’ she whispered, because my son was only a few feet away, ‘maybe it’s a good thing he doesn’t read.’
I wish I could report that I had the perfect comeback, something so polite and brilliantly cutting that Dorothy Parker, overhearing it in heaven raised her fist in victory. But I could only gape at my enemy, stunned. She smiled very nicely and walked away.
I’m laughing again now.
***
I’ve been parched for a while I realize – the effort of moving, the striving for clients and projects, the season of grief that will always be late fall for me. The crisis that is life in the United States right now.
These gifts – lyrics and language layered with honesty, hope, and rest – I am buoyed by them, floating on their art like I’m in a quiet warm lake fed by hot springs, snow painting the trees around me. I kind of need to let them carry me for a bit.
***
I sense it, hear it, see it in the cups of skin beneath our eyes, these days. We are tired. We are worn. We are weary. And for good reason. Life takes much of us, and sometimes we give more than we really have to spare.
So my prayer for all of us today is that we find what holds us up – the people who speak comfort and honesty, the music that makes the curves of our ears tingle and our hearts settle, the books that teach us while also saying, “You’re good. You’re okay. We’ll get through.”
May, today, you be able to laugh, listen, and “let it fall.”