Sure on this shining night / Of star made shadows round / Kindness must watch for me /
This side the ground. / The late year lies down the north. / All is healed, all is health. / High summer holds the earth. / Hearts are whole. / Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand’ring far / alone / Of shadows on the stars.
James Agee
Do you have such moments — where all is healed, all is health? Which seems … undeservedly blissful? When High Summer holds the earth (like right now). Or maybe High Summer reigns within us, when Kindness watches on this side of the ground. When your heart feels whole?
The lines above constitute a fragment from a longer poem, “Descriptions of Elysium,” by the late poet James Agee. Samuel Barber wrote a lovely song and set those words to music. Worth a listen.
Elysium is the paradise of Greek mythology. But we don’t live in Elysium — or maybe we do and just don’t notice, except once every long while, on shining nights of star-made shadows. A moment here and there, temporary, elusive … like us.
I’ve had some such moments lately, as I move along this stretch of strange change called aging, with a full heart, feeling healed. How is a mystery.
Lately, food has been unusually flavorful. Maybe I’m less discriminating these days, or more inclusive. Maybe I lost my sense of taste some time back and didn’t notice for … years? decades? … until it suddenly returned. Like my sense of humor, resurfacing from some Bermuda Triangle of lost laughter. I’m no funnier, but life is, or so it seems. Humor that takes me by surprise, the kindest kind.
Like the dream I had where a friend and I are barreling down the street in a garbage truck that crashes into an apartment building and somehow rolls to a stop on the third floor. Which is occupied by squatters. Wow, my friend the driver says. How did we get here? Good question I reply, and how do we get off the third floor — in a garbage truck? So he calls an insurance adjustor who can’t make it until Thursday, so my friend makes himself at home and finds a mattress to sleep on for the next two days, but one of the squatters says, I don’t think that’s allowed here. I say, You mean there are established protocols for this kind of situation? And I wake up laughing.
Insanity? … or a higher level of sanity? There is a fine line in dreams.
And speaking of surprising I had a week recently where I may have helped numerous people feel better about themselves. Who knows for sure? But one thing I know: they deserve to feel better about themselves, so I did what I could, using my particular skillset and my established place in their lives. Opportunities presented themselves so I put my thumb on several scales. It all happened in a short time span. And it felt good.
This is what we should be doing with our lives, isn’t it? Helping people get what’s coming to them — recognition, appreciation, attention? Connection. Maybe something comes of it, maybe not. A little here and there. Things they might not even notice. Small goodnesses.
Nothing made up, no empty flattery. Real things that maybe only we can see and point out. We are the enzymes of betterment, the yeast of rising. People in our lives helped us feel better about ourselves, so we pass it on.
Maybe that’s the only way to escape the dungeon of ourselves, being part of the nexus of small good deeds. The radiant relay. Do your part and keep the line moving. All above board. All aboard the Betterment Express. No buttering up, just bettering up. The power of positive doing. Turning resistance into assistance. Do you have a list in your heads of people who qualify?
We live a lifetime and develop abilities and invest in people and see what maybe they don’t see, so we point things out and bring together people who might benefit from their respective skillsets and talents.
When we stop wrestling with our inner demons and battling our body chemistry and life lets up on its battery of challenges and hardships and our taste buds spring back to life and our sense of humor returns, goodwill rises. It happens once every while. When it happens several times in one week, you take notice.
It’s easy and feels good and people deserve it. It shouldn’t just happen after they die. We have the capacity and the opportunity to appreciate people now.
I’m sure on this shining night that we can benefit from living like this, when High Summer holds the earth, and we are healed, and our hearts are whole.