“When the dog bites / When the bee stings / When I'm feeling sad... I simply remember my favorite things/ And then I don't feel so bad.” (from The Sound of Music)
This being a time of dog bites and bee stings, I’m moved to describe a few of my favorite things:
** The fragrance of fresh basil leaves, lavender flowers, and those delicate and delicious little white cups of lily of the valley. Proof that miracles do happen—like plants possessing the blueprint enabling them to transform dirt and water and sunlight into intoxicating perfume.
** The human voice making beautiful music, like the blind Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli singing an “Ave Maria,” or Aretha Franklin’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” or Kenneth McKellar singing “Bonnie Mary of Argyle.” Reminders of how deep and various are the feelings in the human heart, and how exquisitely great artistry can give them voice.
** The expression on my wife’s face when she laughs with delight—because there is no clearer window into the beauty of her spirit.
** The taste of a home-grown tomato fully ripened on the vine, or of a good carrot just dug out of the ground. Another of those miracles: how nature’s creations can dovetail so pleasurably with the sensory inclinations nature has crafted in us.
** The films “A Music Man,” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” – two expressions of an American spirit that I have loved since I was a boy.
** The wartime speeches of Winston Churchill, stirring me with the recognition of how great leadership can inspire greatness in a people, rousing them to assure that good prevails over evil in the world.
** Films made in a different culture and a different language – like a Kurosawa movie from Japan – that, by conveying how different cultures have rendered our humanity in such different ways, are reminders that what each of us has grown up to be is not the only thing we might have been.
** Spontaneous riffs of playful conversation with a stranger, like sharing a good laugh with the checker at the grocery store—affirming how the spirit of play can bring people together, and how creative conversation can take us to unanticipated places of discovery.
** The taste of bread fresh from the oven—with flavor and warmth as cozy and pleasurable as a good home.
** Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing together in their films, the way they combine music and the human body in beautiful and precisely composed motion.
** The history of American constitutional law (at least much of it), as generations of outstanding minds have constructed a system of principles and rules as a framework for making a society decent and fair.
** The poetry of the great speeches in Shakespeare’s plays, which shows the magic of language, and shows in particular what a rich pallet that English – a river unique in its many diverse tributaries—provides for us who speak it.
** The poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty, which expresses the generosity of spirit that sometimes this nation has shown.
(Readers are invited to share some of their own favorite things in the comments.)
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Three major spiritual experiences have played a big role in determining the course of my life. Of these three, the second, in 1983, brought home to me -- at a deep heart level – that a most fundamental choice we all face, moment to moment, is one between fear and love.
(While it is generally said that hate is the opposite of love, in some fundamental ways love’s opposite is fear.)
Fear is not in itself something evil. It is for good reason that we are built to be able to experience fear in the face of danger. It motivates us to act in ways that might preserve our lives.
But fear also diminishes us. Emotionally, it makes us more closed. Intellectually, it shuts down our capacity to think clearly and critically. Spiritually, can feed our impulses toward conflict, violence—and hatred.
Thus it is that the Bible tells us, again and again: “Be not afraid.” Thus it is, too, that Buddhism also teaches fearlessness.
In these times, we confront strong reasons to be afraid.
(In a previous piece, I’ve spoken of the three crises piled upon each other right now: the pandemic, the threat to the survival of American democracy, and the gathering destabilization of our planet’s climate. And I wrote of my fear that -- if these crises are not resolved well – our future might be one so dark and broken I could not bear it.)
So, in these times, we have especial need to focus on those things we love: for if fear constricts us, love opens us up. Which makes this an especially important time to fill our lives – and our thoughts – with as much as possible with what we love.
Like our favorite things.