Threads And Patches

True goodness does not turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it and excites their endeavors to mend it.

William Penn
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Hello Sandy
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In this human life, which is made up in large measure of a dream, it is a difficult thing to identify and describe true goodness. The best one can do is to attempt an approach to it and to understand it. There are steps to be taken, of course. I want to be a better man today than I was yesterday, and a better man tomorrow than today. But when does it become "true goodness"? That sounds like an ideal impossible to reach. One might say they are truly good under a certain circumstance, but try holding up their goodness against all the vagaries and vicissitudes of life and see how true it is to the ideal. In the long travel down the road to goodness I guess it can be approbate to say that one who is actively and energetically seeking to be good can be called truly good.

Now what about mending the world? Who says it has to be mended? And if it does how did it get torn in the first place? Ignorance, miscalculation or plain old bad behavior can mess things up and tear the fabric of our world. Among those who are flexing their goodness to mend things are the artists.

I once saw a fascinating lecture given by a well known dancer. He first did some ballet moves, then some modern dance. He followed that with mime and then pantomime. Finally he sat, took out a needle and thread and began sewing up a ballet slipper. Then he said "At the basis of all art is a torn shoe." Soon he went back and showed how all the movements, the balletic, the modern, the mime and pantomime all related somehow to the act of sewing up a tear. He went on to talk about how artists can fis the torn tapestries of our lives, fix broken relationships and improve threadbare ideas. I have always remembered that lecture and whenever I was working on a lay one of the important things I looked far was the tear I had to mend.

DB - The Vagabond.
Never Give Up
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