to dare to have nothing so much to lose
On Saturday I went to a wedding over which a Presbyterian minister presided and on Monday I attended a funeral held under Muslim rites. On Sunday I played with the children of the friends I’ve known since we, too, were children.
This is what home is.
Shared joy and shared grief are not so unlike. In both you find communion, kinship; in each a kind of ecstasy.
Is there anything more optimistic than faith? Faith in the endurance and triumph of love, faith that a life well-lived will be rewarded with everlasting peace, faith in the next generation to do good and live well.
Tonight we celebrate Ole Year’s Night. The end and the beginning, the liminal period in which all things are possible, everything is everything. We reflect, we remember, we grieve. We hope, we are faithful, we believe. The glasses are rose-tinted and half-full. We look back, and we move forward. We are grateful. We are willing.
We are resolute.
Attribution:
I was so willing to pull a page out of my notebook, a day, several bright days and live them as if I was only alive, thirsty, timeless, young enough, to do this one more time, to dare to have nothing so much to lose and to feel that potential dying of the self in the light as the only thing I thought that was spiritual, possible and because I had no other way to call that mind, I called it poetry, but it was flesh and time and bread and friends frightened and free enough to want to have another day that way, tear another page. — Notebook, 1981 by Eileen Myles