Hopefulness Here And There

Art is an act of integration. I’m serious.

Art is also an instance of human success.

I know. It’s strange to place the word “human” in front of “success,” but I think we have to if we want to see ourselves and others clearly. If we don’t—OK…if I don’t—I run the risk of getting horribly confused over what success is and what wholeness is and what remains possible for me and mine in our one human barnyard.

The vast carelessness we behold among people who wish to avoid uncurated questions from strangers while also exercising armed force against them is a vast human unsuccess made up of little instances of human unsuccess. Failures, we might say, to integrate. Failures in finding a moment’s wholeness. Teensy-weensy mission fails that add up after awhile. Sometimes adding up into most of a lifetime alongside other lifetimes. Choices. Humanly unsuccessful choices.

No amount of money can make humanly unsuccessful choices an ultimate success. Lying can be said to succeed. Compelling someone to keep quiet about what they know to be true by threatening them can be viewed—and even marketed—as a win. But it can’t be rightly called a human success.

Integration, however, remains within reach here and there amid the disintegrating choices we see and of which we hear tell here and there. There is, after all, art.

Everyone’s invited to art. Everyone’s invited to integrate.

The image above is the creative labor of Alex Sager. I don’t know how many of my 2,488 subscribers will recognize the image, but I bet most of us who live in Tennessee will.

The title of the work is Do You Think Cameron Sexton is Happy. I won’t presume to even try to say what it means, but…as it lands with me…I’d say Do You Think Cameron Sexton is Happy gets at choices rather beautifully and helpfully and refreshingly. It aids me in the work of thinking harder about what I’m giving my energy to. What I’m cultivating and why. What I’m imagining. What I’m up to. What human successes remain with reach.

I was in the presence of human success when I beheld Do You Think Cameron Sexton is Happy and other lovely efforts at Zeitgeist just the other day.

Let me share another piece from Alex.

This one’s called Space Doesn’t Care About Your Gun Culture. Again, I don’t want my impression to get in the way of what God or Alex or conscience or the holy spirit or Toni Morrison might be telling you, but I believe Alex. I believe the art. And I also believe this: Space doesn’t care about your gun culture.

I’d be pleased to hear about it if any of you want to say something about these works.

Hopefulness here and there and possibly everywhere. It’s all so slow going, but something’s surfacing.

Meribah Knight of WPLN and NPR has a podcast out which follows the stories of three mothers whose kids survived the Covenant shooting. It’s called Supermajority. I haven’t reached the end of it, but it’s time well-spent. It tracks what I’d refer to as their moral awakenings. It’s grim and worrying but also encouraging. It’s an invitation to integration.

One more thing:

I purloined this image from Betty Aberlin. When I shared it on Instagram, a very thoughtful young person asked me if Project 2025 is real.

Reader, it’s real. And I think it helpful, at least for now, to commit to saying the words “Trump” and “Vance” in front of Project 2025 to overcome the efforts to disavow it.

Trump Vance Project 2025.

Trump Vance Project 2025 is already a crushlingly well-funded human unsuccess. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be addressed as the threat to public safety that it is.

A criminal protection racket successfully marketed as conservatism is still a criminal protection racket.

So…let’s nurture and celebrate and amplify acts of integration wherever we find them while remaining alert to corruption carried out with our presumed consent.

Let’s mind what we give our energy to. These words come self-administered.

Art is within reach in our human barnyard. Art remembers.