Earlier today I drafted a post about a conversation I had with my neighbor about the evil in the world. I had a good bit completed but had to stop for a scheduled call to go over some poems with Sarah from Catholic Literary Arts, a group I recently joined.
Based in Houston, Catholic Literary Arts is a wonderful, quickly growing organization dedicated to advancing, as you might have guessed, catholic writers.
Part of the deal with membership is that you get quarterly critiques for two of your poems. I submitted my poems and figured I’d get an email back with a marked up copy of my work. That seemed like a pretty good deal. What I got was an hour and half conversation about writing, my work, the goals of CLA, and encouragement. And then she thanked me for sharing my work!
How could I possibly put up a post about the evil in the world when I’ve been the recipient of such undeserved generosity?
Last night, as my neighbor and I were chatting, she kept coming back to the fact - the undeniable fact, yes - there is so much evil in the world. I kept countering with: yes, but there’s so much good too and we can’t let the evil occupy all the space.
I’d just gotten back from a long walk. I’d walked passed some of my favorite trees. I’d said hello to lots of neighbors, many of whom I only know by sight. Along the way I got to see little kids running around, a ridiculously cute dog with legs about 1/2 inch long, an elderly couple holding hands. The sky was that gorgeous pink, purple, blue, silvery mix that is our reward for walking at sunset.
There is a lot of evil in the world, no doubt, and we need to acknowledge and address it. I just think we should refrain from giving it too much air time, too much bandwidth in our brains.
Tonight, Sarah, for no reason other than goodness, she spent an hour and half talking to me about poetry. She offered encouragement, detailed critique of my work, with suggestions. She did not have to spend that time helping me, but she did because…because why? I think because there is so much goodness in the world, because God made the world, and saw that it was good. And we, we flawed, often evil acting humans, have goodness in us and often we that goodness with others. This is an inelegant way of saying it, but it’s true.
I have lots of wonderful, good, and generous people who’ve supported me in my writing - a weird and solitary sort of thing - such as other artsy type friends like David and Patti (generous as the ocean is deep), and the members of a critique group I’m in; Brian, who’s published a ton of my stuff; my family, they share my posts on FB; and friends like Gretchen and Georgina, Patti and Dori, Teresa and Irene and Paul and Kathleen Anthony and Siobhan and Stephanie and Barbara, and on and on and on. My sister-in-law’s aunt sends me encouraging notes.
I had a poetry reading, one of the 3 or 4 I’ve done. It was my first one and I felt incredibly nervous and sort of stupid - who was I to do this? A whole bunch of my cousins and friends showed up. One of my cousins teared up. Some of the attendees drove over an hour to get there. My friend Gretchen’s cousin and husband came. There were enough people that they needed to bring out more chairs, which is not something that happens at poetry readings (though it should.)
All this is to say thank you, but also to say, look around, see the goodness, give it more bandwidth in your brain than the evil because how you spend your days is how you spend your life, to paraphrase Annie Dillard.