Cynical and drunk and boring someone in a dark café"
So says the Prophetess Joni Mitchell.
She may be right.
I've certainly had my cynical, drunken moments. And I prefer dark cafes and beach bars.
But I remain an unabashed, unapologetic and passionate romantic!
Fanciful, impractical, unrealistic with idealism running through my veins and eyes full of chivalry. I believe in love! Forgiveness beats the hell out of holding onto the bad things that have happened.
I prefer Don Quixote over FOX News, Frodo more than Wall Street, Martin Luther King's dreams and Jesus' admonition to love God and each other as the basis of religion.
Sure, I've been battered and bruised by life's harsh realities. People I believed in let me down, things I believe in haven't always come true and the practical realities of money, society and selfishness have kicked me in the mouth.Still, perhaps stupidly, I refuse to cave in and accept the world the way it is.
I take people at their word and believe that, in the end anyway, they'll do the right thing.
I believe in second chances, angels, visions and the tiny miracles we can all be in each other's life.
I know without a doubt that people can be raised from the dead because I've watched them do it when they'd been living a life with nothing much in it.
I think it's all work out in the long run and it'll be on earth as it is in heaven.
There's nothing easy about any of this. On a daily basis I'm confronted by demonic expressions of greed, selfishness, hypocrisy, envy, pride and anger.
"Of the seven deadly sins, Anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long passed, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back --- in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you" (Frederick Buechner).
I refuse to go there.
Certainly it leads to disappointment sometimes but I still believe that its far better to step out in faith that the world can be better than it is ... if only I'll do my part.
