Today

Let us rejoice today and be glad.

—Psalm 118:24

I know that the world is several versions of mad right now. Pessimism and grimness sometimes seem like the only responsible choices. I wake up at night and think about pesticides and international politics and fundamentalism and disease and roadside bombs and the fact that one day my parents will die. I worry about the world we’re creating for my sons.

That’s why I’m making a shameless appeal for celebration. I need optimism and celebration and hope in the face of violence and despair and anxiety. The other road is a dead end. Despair is a slow death, and a lifetime of anger is like a lifetime of hard drinking: it shows in your face and your eyes and your words even when you think it doesn’t.

The only option, as I see it, is a delicate weaving of action and celebration, of intention and expectation. Let’s act, read, protest, protect, picket, learn, advocate for, fight against, but let’s be careful that in all that accomplishing and organizing, we don’t bulldoze over a world that’s teeming with beauty and hope and redemption all around us. Before the wars are over, before the cures are found, before the wrongs are righted, Today, humble Today, presents itself to us with all the ceremony of a glittering diamond ring: Wear me, it says. Wear me out. Love me, dive into me, discover me.