The Importance of Fairytales

Never do I feel as impotent as I do on days like today, when tragedy erupted in Boston. I'm not a doctor or a nurse or a bomb technician. I can't even give blood. Instead, I write pretty words. It feels foolish, frivolous, irreverent. How, in a world where people deliberately inflict pain on each other, can I justify devoting my time, creativity and energy to making up stories? How unimportant my work feels some days. But -

BEAUTY IS IMPORTANT

LIFE IS IMPORTANT

YOU AND I ARE IMPORTANT

Art might not save lives in the way surgery does, but it does indeed save life. Wrapping our souls and hearts and minds in beauty binds broken spirits like casts bind broken bones. Music and paintings and stories tell us we are not alone, that we matter. They tell us there is evil and darkness and hatred in this world, that at times the darkness win. But they also tell us life and light and love can defeat evil.

Hope rises from beauty, beauty from hope. My creative souls, what you do is vitally important. It matters. You matter. When evil destroys, don't allow it to keep you from creating, from reflecting the light of a loving Creator back into a dark and lonely world.

It is right and it is good to grieve. We, as humans, fail to live up to the bright promise of our potential. Violence and cruelty are all too real. But we cannot allow them to keep us from the work laid out before us, be it to run into fires to extinguish flames or to arrange 12 simple notes into endless, breathtaking arrangements.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Instead of retreating today, create something beautiful and share it. Take care of the people around you, even the ones you might not like. Let your life be a force for creation and not destruction. That is how evil is defeated.