The more we lose, the more we come close to the reality of what it is to be human. Which is to accept our weaknesses, to discover that they’re beautiful. So many people are running around doing lots of things, but they’re controlled by anguish.
Jean Vanier
Henry, Oliver and I went to LACMA last night and visited The Rain Room. It's a very cool installation -- a sqaure room with constant rain fall, except around yourself. You can walk very slowly through rain yet not under rain, if that makes sense.
I always struggle a bit with the pretension inherent in museums. Then I walked through the room along with my sons and other Angelenos. I was charmed.
If you rush or run, you get wet. If you stand still or walk ever so slowly, you're cocooned and able to hear the rain and see it, but it doesn't touch you. There's all kind of metaphor in that, no?
Have I ever told you how much I love Los Angeles?
We also wandered into the Diana Thater exhibit which was some kind of multi-media show about the imagination.
Cool stuff. We were there less than an hour and home 45 minutes later. Gratitude.
I know I've written quite a bit about Jean Vanier and L'Arche here on the old blog. He's my hero. Ian Brown, the terrific Canadian journalist whose book A Boy in the Moon I wrote about years ago when it came out, wrote this terrific profile about Vanier. Read it if you feel hopeless. Read it if your life is filled with riches, both material and spiritual or delirious and spine-tingling sex.
Jean Vanier's comfort and joy: 'What we have to do is find the places of hope'
