World with Heart

But what we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occa­sion to turn on one another. As we dis­cuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humil­ity. Rather than point­ing fin­gers or assign­ing blame, let us use this occa­sion to expand our moral imag­i­na­tions, to lis­ten to each other more care­fully, to sharpen our instincts for empa­thy, and remind our­selves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.

Did we tell a spouse just how des­per­ately we loved them, not just once in awhile but every single day?

Barack Obama

Yes­ter­day I drove past a boy and his father play­ing catch in the school yard. It was Sat­ur­day so just the two of them. I was a ghost to them, noth­ing, a moment of a car they did not see. What I saw was the boy watch­ing his father run to get the ball. The boy was com­pletely and only in that moment. His shoul­ders were rolled back loose; his smile effort­less. His father was run­ning as if back in time to reach him­self as a boy, his own pres­ence, his own effort­less­ness, and he was happy too, as best as he could be, but not like his son. I zipped by them, father, then son and then me look­ing at myself in the rearview mir­ror. And me look­ing to the future and to a boy‘s world. I know what it is to be a boy. That is some­thing I know. I remem­ber, but I have for­got­ten every­thing, like a lan­guage I stopped speak­ing before it became my native tongue. A love welled up in me.

But the love that I am won­der­ing about is des­per­ate love. Out of the whole amaz­ing speech Obama gave in Ari­zona after the shoot­ings this week, this line sunk in me like a stone, like truth. The des­per­ate lone­li­ness of life itself calls for some­thing to get me out of me. It must be this des­per­ate love. Does he know about this? He is about my age, a lit­tle older, but we are con­tem­po­raries. He talks of des­per­ate love from the pres­i­den­tial podium. I won­der if we heard this? I won­der if we heard the sup­posed most pow­er­ful man reveal that he knows the secret lone­li­ness of being here at all, that he know­sthat our hope is to look at the real­ity of life and love still. Love is the only coun­ter­weight for the loneliness.

There are cir­cles of this love. The world needs to hear the words, out there. My com­mu­nity needs to see me walk and work with integrity and love, my friends need my open heart. But a closer world cir­cles in around me. In that world there is a very small space, the holy of holies in me. In this place in me, lan­guage breaks down and I am left with my naked self. That place is where I am feel­ing Rose, because it is where I am invit­ing her. It is not fate. It‘s a choice. Sim­ple. Love. This deci­sion in me is my gift to me and it is my gift to my son. Noth­ing I can say to him mat­ters com­pared to the action of accept­ing love from his mother and lov­ing his mother. And I am lov­ing you Rose, des­per­ately, in this quiet place in me, for you, only.