As the forests burn,
and the water swallows homes,
and people I know are kidnapped
while picking organic fruit meant
for my table
and yours—
I find myself turning to art.
I’m listening to old songs
where the guitar strings squeak
and the voices rust like barbed wire.
The beat drops early if Hank’s feeling it,
later if Jon’s on a tear.
I’ve cracked the books I paid for in college,
thumbing through poets
they never assigned.
And I think—
These are the times anthologies were built for,
banks of riches
like gold bars on our shelves.
I feel breezes and sunbeams
that know my name—
from the days my big teeth were coming in,
scabs on both knees,
dewberry stains on my fingers.
They whisper:
We remember you.
Because if the world doesn’t care
about trafficked children,
ancient cities turned to dust,
violence carved into women’s lives,
or swindled dollars that stack into billions—
Who will care about me?
About the children I’ve made,
the home I love like breath,
the souls I see
when no one else has bothered to look?
So I turn to the painters,
the quilters,
the ones who twist metal into earrings,
who step onto stages
armed only with their knowing
of pain, and love, and loss—
So we might feel
something other than
our own suffering—
even for a moment.
I’ve returned to my faithful mind—
the one that sees in metaphor,
reads between the words,
pulls at the thread
until truth appears.
And in this foray into the arts,
I am restored to myself.
My soul knows:
Despite the cowardly lunges toward power
by the fearful, emasculated, and greedy—
the ones who use decisions like arrows—
Still, something good lives inside us.
And if I can’t believe that,
then I have to see it all
for what it is
and for what they do—
sometimes even in the name of God.
So I ask for courage.
The kind that grows slow
but holds fast—
like those gnarly trees on rocky cliffs
that refuse to abandon the earth,
even when the wind howls betrayal.
I ask for a truth
that hums inside me
like a song I didn’t choose
but somehow already know
and cannot stop singing—
not because it’s easy,
but because it’s mine.
My soul has defended against the shushing
since my earliest days.
I was not made to keep quiet—
or to look away.
And still—
some part of me believes
there’s a softness in people
that refuses to die,
even when the world
keeps trying to beat it out of us.
That underneath the fear,
and the greed,
and the power-hungry noise,
there’s a pulse of something holy
still kicking—
still rising—
still wild enough to matter.
And I won’t be the one
to stop listening for it.
Not now.
Not ever.
So I’ll keep reading
and writing
and reflecting
and ruminating.
I’ll let my eyes and ears and tastebuds
be dazzled
by the ones whose vision lives
a little closer to the divine.
And I’ll trust
that the good will slice its way
through the weight of the current horrors
with a white light so fine and so sharp,
it harms nothing but the problem.
Art makes living through agony worthwhile—
To see a sunset.
To belly laugh at a joke.
To draw a perfect heart.
To splash in a puddle.
To hear a single bird singing.
It’s all art, Darling.
If you enjoyed this post, explore Julie’s Season of Self program.
