When my father was dying his breath was as sweet as a gardenia, and he had a sheen about him that there was only one word for - beauty. I took a photo of him in the hospital but later when I looked at the photo, it just looked like an old man dying - it didn’t capture his energy or the beauty I that had entranced me while I shelled his favorite nuts - pistachio, and placed them in his mouth like a tiny bird.
When my grandmother had her stroke I was nine years old and I cried at the foot of her hospital bed when she was in her coma, my heart a fifty pound weight in my small body.
Before her stroke, men followed my grandmother down the street and so did women and dogs and children, but she barely noticed. Despite her hard and seemingly impossible life, she was in love with the world, and it radiated from her.
After her stroke, there were three grieving men at the foot of her hospital bed all claiming to be in love with her.
Will it surprise you if I tell you my grandmother in her sixty’s looked like George Washington? She was four foot eleven, had large breasts and a very large angular slavic nose.
To me and to most who walked in her wake, she was always the most beautiful woman.
Poet Mary Oliver said we need beauty because it makes us ache to be worthy of it.
Looking at the news of the world I often feel grief, anxiety, distress and sometimes like I am clinging to a sinking sailboat in a turbulent sea and have lost my compass, and I know you must often feel this way too.
Because of these times, we are asked more than ever the find the beauty in the world -the wren and the Shama bird and ripe mango to pull off the branches of the tree. We have each other and our stories, and our stories become the compass.
I just need to step out of my home to witness what I love about it - not just the people but the songbirds and giant sow crossing my yard with her six babies at midnight on a full moon, the pregnant Palomino horse taking carrots from my hand.
We have so much to love - Joni Mitchell and basketball courts and street dancers and old Greek men selling Baklava on street corners in Manhattan.
Loving the world is the most important thing we can do right now, because the attention we give to the beauty becomes the gold we offer back to the world.
Years ago poet WS Merwin said if you focus on anger, you lose touch with why you’re defending something in the first place: that you revere it and love it and respect it.
Merwin often talked about a passage in Thoreau’s journal where Thoreau is talking about the closing of Concord Commons, a place where poets gathered every weekend in San Francisco to read their work. One Friday night there was an eviction sign on the door and it never reopened.
Thoreau was deeply, deeply upset and distressed. He said to his friends after much contemplation - I did not love it enough when it was the Commons.
That’s it, said Merwin - You have to pay attention to it the way it is now. You can lose the whole thing tomorrow—you can lose your dog, you can lose your child, you can lose anything tomorrow—but love it in the meantime.
The world is upside down, it’s all sharps and flats if we forget to listen closer. It’s too much for me to save or you to save, I am certain of that - but it’s not too much for us to love.
When I was in Oregon visiting my grandchildren, my granddaughter and I talked about the possibility of her getting braces some day and she expressed being nervous about it. I said I’ll get them with you and we can do it together.
She stopped walking and pulled on my arm.
Oh no, grandma, I love your smile just the way it is. Please don’t change it!
I looked into her face and knew she didn’t see my shattered jaw bone from an accident in my youth, or my crooked teeth or the deep laugh lines - she saw a woman who loved the world world for sixty three years and gave that world back to her, and that makes me beautiful.
As a writer and writing teacher, I had my students make lists of things they love about the world this week, and then I started with a line from a Rosemerry Trohmer Wahtola line from one of her poems… I can’t save the world.
Today I’m going to invite you to do the same by offering you the exercise a hundred writers did this week. Please join us in loving the world:
(set a 2-minute timer) List what you love about the world.
(set a timer for 3-minutes) Write this sentence at the top of your page I can’t save the world, but…
Post in the comments section below and in our Writing at Red Lights private Facebook group for all writers.
Laura Lentz is the founder of Literati Academy, and the author of Freeing the Turkeys and STORYquest, the Writer, the Hero, the Journey.
You said share, what was written, ok here goes. List what you love about the world. Clouds, blue sky, grey clouds with the green of spring contrast, and grey clouds with the Autumn contrast of yellow, red,orange, brown leaves and dark green, and bare branches. Flowers, wild flowers swaying in the wind in a field. Water with ripples with sunlight playing on it like children's laughter when running in a park. Wind whirling dried leaves down the street in fall in a dance of pure joy without any concern of who is watching or what anybody thinks. Puppies romping, kittens being cute, birds when they lose their tail feathers. Cranes, herons standing majestically in the edge of a lake. The rustle of the wind through the trees sounding like waves of the ocean when you close your eyes. Waves at the ocean and tidal pools with critters and driftwood.
Next part: I can't save the world but...I can enjoy the moonlight if I go outside at night, I can decide to live and enjoy life. I can take the time needed to learn something new. I can move and exercise because I want to stay mobile always and live inside my own body and enjoy being here. I can eventually say I have had enough and stop working...when? I can be kind to myself and stop putting myself last, and throw shame out the door because it is an unwelcome guest that I did not invite and have no reason to hold on to it or accept it's presence. I can look at failures as a learning experience and adjust and move forward from there.
Thanks for this exercise!
A healing message. I am also a writing teacher and a lover of souls. I applaud you standing wrapprd in love and sharing. The greatest pilgrimage is to solace the sirrow loving soul! (Baha'i writings)