SOMETHING ELSE

"After the Rain", oil, by Linda McCoy

“But there is something else very great, it makes the whole

      coincide,

It, magnificent, beyond materials, with continuous hands sweeps and provides for all.”

-- Walt Whitman, “Starting from Paumanok”

It’s comforting to me to come back to the truth that there is, as Whitman says, “something else” besides the small and sometimes bothersome things in daily life. There’s something else, something grander and more magnificent and magnanimous than the miniscule concerns and tasks of today and tomorrow. It’s reassuring to realize that, after all the daily tasks have been taken care of, there’s still a splendor thrown over my life, a light that’s brighter than all the big ideas I’ve had, all the cares and trials that have tested me. It’s this “something else” that speaks to me, day by day, sometimes in the midst of major worries or delights. I can be wondering whether I should get my car serviced today or tomorrow, and suddenly I will see so clearly that there’s something inside my life that lifts all my small concerns up into the magnificence that makes all things new and helpful. I will see that even the smallest task or distress can do for me what sunshine does for flowers or rain does for rivers – send a freshness through me that fills my life with a light made by something else – something different, something besides – that’s as sparkling as all the stars.