Every so often my mind returns to a couplet I wrote years ago trying to drum up a song:
“I’ve heard people say all the world is a stage;
From what I can tell, it’s a play about rage.”
It still hasn’t blossomed into a song — maybe it’s not the opening lines but somewhere in the middle.
I grow old … I grow old … Do I dare to eat a peach? Yes, that’s a non sequitur. I continue to be dicombobulated when I raise my head above the trench line and peek at the ongoing play. So many people are so angry at the horrible behavior of other people that they scarcely notice the horrible behavior among those who agree with them.
And how do I respond when someone broaches the topic? Nod in apparent agreement, or meet rage with rage? No, my instinct these days is not to conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of my mind. Yes, I cribbed that line from my old friend Paul, and I’ve referenced Will Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot while I’m in the neighborhood.
“Do not repay anyone evil for evil,” Paul wrote to his friends in Rome. “Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”
Ah, but these are not peaceful times, one might respond. How can you live at peace when THOSE PEOPLE are DOING THAT?
I’m trying so hard, and Paul tells me to just try harder: “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law.”
So, I’m going to try just a little bit harder, which is a fine Janis Joplin tune, by the way. And I’m pretty sure few people have ever referenced Shakespeare, Eliot, Janis and Paul the apostle in the same essay. I’m fairly confident I haven’t.
