Today, I'm going to try to write the three to five hundred words I promised myself (and my website) I would produce every Friday, including the bad ones. They will exist, even if they aren't what anyone else wanted me to write about, even if no one reads them. I can only show up and do the work, press "save and publish," and be content in the showing up part. There's no making plants grow once they're in the ground, there's just tending the land and letting God do the thing. Writing, especially in the world we live in, works much the same way.
When I've gotten to the word count I'm aiming for, I'm going to start gathering fun music for a lady at my church. It's going to be a fun mix, and if I've learned anything in the last year, it's that making a gift, engaging the art, playing with sand, is one of the best ways to remind myself that the world isn't over, and that there is still a lot to love.
I'm going to say thank you. I will raise a single finger to despair.
If the opportunity arises, I’m going to ask my hanai father for advice. I’m going to try to listen. I am not going to keep scrolling through the news feeds, as though the news gets better near the bottom.
I am going to introduce one of my favorite shows to a friend. We'll chat about the shows we've watched. The dog will be surprised to see me. Before I get there, I’ll drink some tea.
Today’s also the day I start a book, Leaving the Atoca Station. It was recommended to me almost a year and a half ago, that somehow seems like the right answer today, rather than all of the days I did not read it. Books call out when it’s time to read them. Today, despite an absolutely unreadable forecast in both my soul and the sky, I am certain I should start this book.
And today, I’m going to defy the notion that the world is already over, that no solutions will ever be reached, that forgiveness and grace and redemption are dead. I am going to live in the reality of Resurrection, the death that comes and the life on its heels, the unstoppable movement of Goodness that is slowly filling every corner of the universe, driving the darkness into the news cycle, where someday it will die. And I am going to love.
Photo by Quentin REY on Unsplash