when was the last time you saved the world?
and: if you are not saving the world, what are you saying about what you believe in it?
dear little voice,
when was the last time you saved the world?
and: if you are not saving the world, how are you spending your days?
and: if you are not saving the world, what are you saying about what you believe in it?
i say this because maybe the most interesting thing about the power to save the world is that we carry it wherever we go:
some of the words in this Poem that delight me the most cannot be found in the poem at all, but in its title: The Just.
Justice is a word with an intimidating grammar. when we listen to stories about it, it is most usually served, handed down, rendered, or demanded. it is a word that casts us in its shadows; that can make frightening demands and remind us all at once of the scale and smallness of our Hearts and hands.
"The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means."
-Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
it is not usually spoken of as something that is offered, given, devoted, or created with simple hands by simple people from the dust and dim of the world offered to us.
there are days where the world feels slow to illuminate. but then an orchid comes into bloom; someone picks up an instrument for a stranger; or speaks to another with words that are strong and clear and good; or asks an enemy what their idea of heaven is— and suddenly, privately, barely noticed, concealed within the bloom of a body: another human being understands that, even if only for a moment, all they have suffered as a result of having existed shall be forgotten as soon as it was given.
i cannot assume what magic is, but I can assume that this is close.
George Sand, from a letter to Gustave Flaubert written c. September 1971
if justice is redemption from a loveless world, then it follows that— as a gesture— it is bringing into fullness that which this world lacks: love.
justice is bold and necessary. but these moments suggest that it may also be something else: that it can exist too in the unobtrusive and calm gestures of an ordinary life. that it is something that can be permanently accessed and freely given. that, yes, it still retains the gift of risk— of closeness, of vulnerability— but only because of its irresistible tranquility: the possibility of enfolding another. the possibility of intimacy as a kind of redemption from a world that has hardened itself against it.
“We find comfort only in another beauty, in others’ music, in the poetry of others. Salvation lies with others, though solitude may taste like opium. Other people aren’t hell if you glimpse them at dawn, when their brows are clean, rinsed by dreams.”
— Adam Zagajewski, from “Another Beauty”, trans. Clare Cavanagh
Olafur Eliasson, The weather project, Tate Modern, London, 2003
we seldom consider our lives as a commitment to this: in fact, we routinely are taught otherwise by very large and unkind people who would prefer justice remain inaccessible and therefore impossible to us. that would prefer we feel powerless because we are small— because our voices are very little.
what are we saying when we confine justice to the grand and mighty?
are we saying that malevolence and shame matter only on the largest of scales; that cruelty and dismay are simply the routine stuff of life, not worthy of our responsibility also? that oppression and sadness are the unavoidable material of the world, that it is to be tolerated when it is small— as though cruelty is justified by its scale? that it must be large in order to earn our attention?
it seems to me that to tolerate any suffering is to be in service to all of it— no matter the size, no matter the scale. that to insist that your hands and Heart are powerless to it is to deceive the vital obligation of our living and dying here on earth: love.
does, perhaps, the world feel headed for disaster? sometimes. am i hopeful? yes.
i choose to be hopeful because to be hopeful is to be kind. and this is good and this is simple.
i choose to be hopeful because to be hopeful is a kind of oath. when we remain hopeful with the full understanding of the terms of the world we are living in— that sometimes it is unsafe, and other times unkind, and often unjust— we are promising ourselves to love. we are swearing that our every tenderness matters, no matter how small, no matter how quiet. and it does matter, too: because everyone who receives tenderness matters— no matter how small, and no matter how quiet.
Kahlil Gibran, excerpts from Sand and Foam
i am serving the world because it is a good and thrilling and beautiful place, even if it is not always righteous, and it is not always kind.
and i want to be that place, too: to be good and thrilling and beautiful. to go out burning with it in the blaze of one final magic trick: casting enough light for a thousand darknesses.
and then the world will go on. and the lives in it will, too— in quiet rooms and open streets. with or without me.
the world is still and complete as it is. everything that ever has been and everything that ever will be— any event, any thought, any person or laughter or cry— no matter how small, is intimately and thrillingly hitched and tied to another, just as all rivers run to the sea, and all trees share their roots in profound and quiet intimacy.
when we perceive our humble everyday kindnesses for what they are: as invincible to time’s steady movements, when we perceive every moment as a wild and generous invitation toward them, justice becomes apparent for not something that can be, but as something that is.
"I shall pass through this world but once. any good thing that I can do or any kindness that I can show. let me do it now, let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” - By Sheila Johnstone.
it’s what Leonard Cohen was singing about when he wrote:
“forget your perfect offering/ there is a crack, a crack in everything/ that's how the light gets in”
and it all matters, too. it matters that someone picks up the windblown candy wrapper, that someone waves from the train platform, fulfils the brief and startling desire to write a stranger a love-note, composts a banana, listens to the indecipherable dream, wishes someone sleeps well, writes a letter, holds a hand, steps aside, stands up, listens, holds the door, wipes away a tear, smiles at a song, gives permission, opens the window, lets in the light.
these people, unaware, are saving the world.
it matters because it is an agreement about life between people that life matters. an agreement without terms or clauses.
Roman Vishniac. Sunlight streaming into a railway station. Berlin. 1920′s
perhaps our sole moral imperative in the brief spasms of our very human lives is just this: to love.
if you allow this to be true, for a moment, you may feel it now: its breathing simplicity. its irresistible call. its quiet revolution. where you were born, where you are going, where you can be, and what you can give while you here. even if just for a little while.
love,
ars poetica.
little voice: it is my belief that Poetry is a human birthright. my work will always be completely free, and takes considerable Time and Love to give to you several days a week. if it has brought you Joy, consider buying me a book so that I may continue to tuck Words in your pocket:
We should invert our eyes and practice a sublime astronomy in the infinitude of our hearts, for which God was willing to die … If we see the Milky Way, it is because it actually exists in our souls.
- Léon Bloy, as quoted by Jorge Luis Borges in “The Mirror of Enigmas,” Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings (New Directions, 1964)
“it matters because it is an agreement about life between people that life matters. an agreement without terms or clauses.” Wow. Beautiful piece. Thank you for this!!
I don't know why, but the line "God bled galaxies into us" just popped into my head after reading this incredible love-soaked inspiring article.