Awful Beautiful Life

I love this crazy, tragic
Sometimes almost magic
Awful beautiful life.

– Darryl Worley, Awful Beautiful Life

Davy introduced me to the above country music song today, though he and I both have mixed feelings about it. We like the chorus; the verses need help.

One thing that strikes me about these lines is, of course, the study in contrasts. The last, especially, I find interesting, because "awful" actually means "full of awe." Naturally the author meant it in the way it is used by modern folks everywhere: that is, to signify a bad or disgusting state of affairs. But if one were to take the older meaning... well, I like it.

These three lines affirm the paradox of life with fresh, vibrant expression. Sometimes almost magic--how true! I have so many times felt that, if I could just touch a fingertip to some invisible curtain hanging before my eyes, it would melt away... and the magic would be just on the other side, waiting for me. Crazy, oh yes!--and tragic, oh, yes. And then the final line, with my meanings: full of awe, beautiful. Life. Such a big word, for all it has only four letters. "Life means so much," Chris Rice sings. "Teach us to count the days. Teach us to make the days count." Chris Rice reminds me of King David. His songs remind me of God. I'm grateful.

I was deep-cleaning and rearranging my room last night--we've been in our house for seven years, and my windows just received their very first curtains--when a friend called. The first question he asked me was, "How do you define 'whim'?"

"Whim?"
"Whim."
"Um... 'a transient desire which one may or may not act upon, depending on one's degree of self-control or self-indulgence'?"
He laughed. "Okay. I was going to say 'me calling you on August 4th.'"
"That would work too."

We chatted of this and that, but wound up on the subject of what made us turn to literature, specifically poetry, as a source of pleasure and voluntary study. Neither of us had, at one point in our lives, enjoyed the ars poetae.

"It's just so..." I paused, searching for an example. "Well, here... there's a song called Passenger Seat. Let me quote a few lines to you."

Passenger side I slide right in
Vinyl seats soft from the heat of the sun

- Shedaisy, Passenger Seat

"I think that what I love about this," I continued, "is the way the sounds work together. It's so intricate and complex...I mean, listen to just the use of the letter 's.'"

This morning, while taking our Constitutional (that is, walking around the building for a mandatory exercise break), Laura asked me if I had any practical tips for the practice of joy.

"I know you've been working on joy for the past year..."

I thought about it, and told her what had made the difference for me. Certain books, certain teachings, a certain season of deep pain that turned me to God in ways I had never imagined possible, the cultivation of prayer, an attitude of gratefulness, etc.

"It's just about looking deeper in the first place you looked." I told her. "No different from what we've always known. It's the Gospel all the way."

Now, my dear, this is the binding tie of all that I have related to you in this post. It just occurred to me as a true thing... I see beauty, so much more and so much more vividly, because I have learned how to be--in some small measure--joyful. Poetry never mattered to me before I began to study joy. Becoming joyful has been the result of beholding my God in his radiant loveliness, and, almost as a byproduct, I have become exquisitely, achingly sensitive to beauty.

Thus the sharp sweetness of these lyrics and poems and songs, which never mattered to me before. Thus the sense of awe, the feeling of having been pierced by light. Thus... and may I never recover.

Beauty, and life, and joy... what has God not given me?