Sparks

Where I sit, it’s sunny and sixty degrees. The birds are singing, the lawn mowers have roared to life. The flowers are bursting with yellows and pinks. The wind rustles the bright green and waxy magnolia leaves. The notes from Beyoncé’s new album, Cowboy Carter, are floating from the speakers of my phone streaming from Spotify. And, it’s Good Friday.

People who celebrate, well, celebrate isn’t exactly the word, is it? No. For people who…
honor? no.
memorialize? no.
observe? Yes, observe.
For people who observe Good Friday, they know what it means. For those who don’t, it’s the day of the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ. The whole “good” part of Good Friday always confused me. Seems to have confused much of the world as well, but, alas, there are two main possibilities in the general consensus for the title:
1. Jesus dying for the sins of humankind is the very definition of the gospel, a.k.a., good news.
or
2. Back in the day (don’t know what day) “good” meant “holy” so it’s really just another way to designate it as a Holy Friday. The Holy Friday.

Today felt like a mostly good Friday in my little microcosm and as I was listening to Beyoncé’s new album, I was getting all kinds of artistic inspiration: SPARKS. It made me wonder what gave her the sparks to write and perform that album. How many people around the world were getting sparks just listening to what she created? How many of those people were moved to create something of their own? What are they creating? Music? Visual art? Books? Poems? Dance? I wonder, if from the cosmic Heavens, presided over by (insert your chosen deity here), there’s a global view shining with the scatter plot sparks of all the inspiration created by the release of that album. Then, in a different color glow, the inspiration sparked from those sparks begin to glow. I can almost feel the warmth from the glow of sparks begetting sparks until the entire globe is aglow with inspiration, connection, meaning, and hope.

Hope. Like the kind of hope some believe people received on a Friday a long long long time ago when a simple person may have drawn his last breath to save the world. Whether you practice the religion that believes this story or not, there’s something moving about the idea. The idea that the hope created from one event and spark a chain reaction of hope that could change your world or the whole world.

Just something a little spark can do.