ChrisA

On Basic Goodness



I am grateful to the men who initiated me into manhood this weekend. Thanks to the superior role models in my life, I am gaining trust in my own goodness—the goodness that can be found in every person—the goodness that, lying dormant for so many months or so many years, waits for a special hour, a ripe moment, to blossom into maturity.

I think back to my addiction, my adolescence, my ignorance, and I realize how that ignorance could have gone on for another decade. What brings us to see the mistakes we are making in our lives? What awakens us at last? Could it be a calling to something higher and nobler, than the life we are living?

I know this: what elevates us is inside of us: but it is called out of us by other human beings. Goodness is called out of us. We do not do good. We realize that we are good, and that our true nature is basic goodness. This is not about sainthood or perfection. This is about frailty, mediocrity, and acceptance.

Life seems unquestionably to be about loss, or in Elizabeth Bishop’s poetic phrase, “the art of losing”. But lately I’ve been thinking just the opposite. For the first time, I begin to see how losing my mother means gaining all mothers, and how losing the particular implies an even greater gain in some other form—if only the mind can be opened wide enough to see that nothing is ever really lost. Maybe this is the reason for basic goodness. Because we are whole and adequate as we are, nothing can be lost.



CRA 9/25/2006

MsJacquiiC

hmmm - I like the inspiration behind this piece CHRIS, but for the life of me I can't find one good reason to agree with what you've written LOL...

Well one good reason... Because I know that goodness does reside in me... Along with the bad... But it doesn't have to be called out by anyone but me!
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On another note - I'd like to think for the sake of humanity that what you've written is more correct than not. But it behooves me to think that you could be, as when I cut on the television - 1st thing I heard was how example a murdered example b in a cocaine robbery of example c.

Anyway - God once said (if you believe in the divinity of God) "Let there be light" -----> I say "Let there be hope for a better peace."

Jacquii.