Everything Really Matters, A Lot
B: I think that it might be important to take a minute and savor the fact that you no longer actively think you’re terrible
B: I think that it might be important to take a minute and savor the fact that you no longer actively think you’re terrible
I didn’t know how to write about a rain jacket on Palm Sunday after forty-four people died in their churches.
Last fall, my much-delayed Megabus dropped me off in Chinatown at 2:30 a.m. I had seven percent battery life, four dollars in cash, and no idea how to get to Brooklyn.
I believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. These were borrowed words and they were not mine.
Strangers think it’s “cool” that I lived there, which, whatever it means, isn’t true. It was something else entirely.
I thought of Cairo, of the refugee kids I met, the illiterate mothers, the desperately poor. And I stopped her to ask earnestly, “Where do you find hope?”
In Egypt, I experienced a profound sense of longing, both for the home I had left and for the land that God has promised me. I felt unduly blessed and absurdly limited.
I don’t forget my body in Cairo, or rarely. I am thickly and humanly here, and it doesn’t feel much like art. It’s odd and awkward and difficult to understand.
I haven’t discovered any resolution to the twin tasks of gratitude and lamentation, a word I may be using to sanctify my grousing.
You risk crossing a busy street. You risk asking questions. You risk being wrong, and hurting people you love, and you risk being right, and doing the same thing.