artist in the arctic

I Believe

Credo, Latin for “I believe,” which I do, very strongly, in a number of things.

I believe there is a mysterious and graceful and miraculous Coherence stitched through this world.

I believe that this life is an extraordinary gift, a blink of bright light between vast darknesses.

I believe that the fingerprints of the Maker are everywhere: children, hawks, water.

I believe that even sadness and tragedy and evil are part of that Mind we cannot comprehend but only thank, a Mind especially to be thanked, oddly, when it is most inscrutable.

I believe that children are hilarious and brilliant mammals.

I believe that everything is a prayer.

I believe that my wife is the strongest and most graceful female being I have ever met, with the possible exception of my mother.

I believe that a family is a peculiar and powerful corporation, lurching toward light, webbed by love, a whole ridiculously bigger than its parts.

I believe, additionally, that friends are family.

I believe, deeply and relievedly, in giggling.

I believe that the best of all possible breakfasts is a pear with a cup of ferocious coffee, taken near the ocean, rather later in the morning than earlier, preferably in the company of a small sleepy child still in her or his rumpled and warm pajamas, his or her skin as warm and tawny as a cougar pelt.

I believe that love is our greatest and hardest work.

Brian Doyle