Truth, beauty and goodness
Her Perspective
By Liz Biggs
Dolly Parton, Gloria Steinem and Wendell Berry died recently — good humans who made the world a better place. Music, journalism, poetry, storytelling and art — I am grateful for creative people who remind us there is beauty on this earth.
Steinem wrote a book called “The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off!” I just returned from Germany and visited the Berlin Wall Monument, built directly on the former command site of Nazi secret police headquarters, where the atrocities of the Holocaust were planned and coordinated. I suppose there will always be bad people like Hitler — racists, homophobes and greedy, dishonest politicians and billionaires. This truth will not set you free; it will piss you off.
How do we strive to be good people? Here’s some inspiration: According to USA Today, “Steinem’s greatest gift was her ability to listen to others, to make others feel seen and heard. Her words, her actions and example gave people permission to be their truest selves. Gloria lived true to her independent spirit, always with curiosity and a great sense of humor.”
Or you could be like Dolly — a champion of early childhood literacy — and create a nonprofit program like her Imagination Library, which has delivered over 100 million books to children.
But you know what will set you free? Listening to Parton sing “Coat of Many Colors” and “I Will Always Love You.” Or if you’re feeling funky, listen to Robert Palmer sing “Every Kinda People” or Sly and the Family Stone’s “Everyday People.” Or seek solace in nature like Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver.
Truth and beauty can be found in this line from her inspiring poem, “Wild Geese:”
“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”
If you really want to experience truth, beauty and goodness, lose yourself in Wendell Barry’s comforting poem, “The Peace of Wild Things:”
“When despair for the world grows in and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives might be, I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
In her poem, “The Summer Day,” Mary Oliver famously asks, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your wild and precious life?” Well, Mary, I plan to seek truth, beauty and goodness. And write about my discoveries.
