Untitled Suicide Prevention
Some of my students are writing personal narratives right now. In an effort to practice what I preach, I am doing the same. So, this does double duty. As far as I'm concerned, I'm on the clock.
This morning, I took a painting from my home office to my Hamline office. It’s not a remarkable painting, but I’ve kept it around since I painted it in a garden-level apartment on Minnehaha Avenue in Saint Paul, MN. I think it was 2002, but it might have been 2001.
It belongs at Hamline, not my house. It exists because of Hamline.
The night I painted it, I had two choices: create something or destroy something, probably myself. I chose the former because somebody had told me to do all the good I can, by all the means I can, in all the ways I can, in all the places I can, at all the times I can, to all the people I can, as long as ever I can. And I believed them.
The last part of the John Wesley quote is important. I could still do good. I still had time to do something useful, but only if I continued to exist, and to do that, I had to get through the night. So I painted. And because I believed the words of John Wesley and because …
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