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| Photograph courtesy of sxc.hu and Thomas Rathbone of Chagrin Falls, Ohio. |
Create. Imagine a better world. Live.
One might have thought like Macbeth that "virtues will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against / The deep damnation of [such] taking-off; / And pity, like a naked newborn babe, / Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed / Upon the sightless couriers of the air, / Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, / That tears shall drown the wind." Had I not known already that writers were fallible instruments of wisdom, I would have learned it then, when so many American writers jettisoned the love and compassion demanded by the moment and flew to use those losses as a weapon against their own government. Therefore I make no attempt to climb some mount of wisdom and lay some tenth-year wreath of heartsease flowers but remember other words.
Create. Imagine a better world. Live.
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing." 1 Corinthians 13: 1-3
Create. Imagine a better world. Live.
If I speak with the tongue of man or angel but without love, if I give up all I have and allow my body to be burned without love: how apt these words seem to that bad time! Not long ago, Makoto Fujimura ended an address on the purposes of art with these words of hope that make good instructions for the living: "By continuing to create and imagine a better world, we live."
Create. Imagine a better world. Live.
