This week we all mark an entire year dealing with Covid. Close your eyes for a minute, and breathe in all this year has meant for you: The losses, the fears, the emotional tsunami. Take a moment to soothe your heart through all that. And another breath to focus on the moments of quiet beauty, the secret blessings, whatever has fed you through this year.
What a crazy trip around the sun! For myself, I’ve spent the winter in the blanket-fort of my soul, after losing my husband Charlie to Lou Gehrig’s disease in the fall. And now we are heading into spring, into new possibilities, into recovery of different kinds. There is no going back—there is only going forward into the new. We long for the safety of the known, but life draws us forward into the possible. And if we let ourselves, we can be crazily hopeful. About the economy? Maybe. About politics? Hm.
Hope about Life itself? Always. And here’s where art comes in. Watching the world’s dancers and painters and Native bead artists and muralists, watching the Myrna Soundstage, and the fantastic quilt show at the Holter, and the online 1-person Grandstreet plays—I find that art draws me back into life. And getting to work with my amazing and remarkable team as they imagine and create and adjust and make things work, that’s been my great honor and sustaining pleasure of this year.
What is all this juice and all this joy? A strain of the earth’s sweet being… writes Gerard Manley Hopkins. Our wish for you this spring: That the earth’s sweet being will pour some healing into your heart. And that art, here at The Myrna Loy or elsewhere, will fill you with juice, and joy.
