Jennifer Garvey Berger

Spoken in English. Their words, as they said them.

Actually today, I had a bush cut down so that I could see it from my study. It was quite an ugly bush.

And the the sculpture changed me. Right? It it opened up a possibility to me in a shop window in Toulouse. Opened up a sense of possibility for me that meant I couldn't quite hold my life in the same way. Couldn't quite see things in the same way I had seen them before. That's a cool piece of art.

This is a a sculpture of a child. A young person. Probably poor, barefoot. And wearing rags, standing on a tree stump. And the child's hands are outstretched and around the child, on the ground, on the arms, on the tree trunk are crows.

And you can imagine a horrible sculpture. The thing that I've just described, a poor barefoot child surrounded by somewhat frightening birds. I'm the child. It's swooping around the child. But the sculpture is quite beautiful. And the child is so beautiful. And the birds are so beautiful. And, and I was describing this sculpture to others around me who hadn't seen it. And you could tell in their faces they could not understand how this thing I was describing could be beautiful. It sounded a little bit sad, Maybe scary.

Maybe ugly. And then you see it.

And it's beauti- it feels good. You think, oh, this is, this communion between this child and these birds, it's generative. It's loving.

And then you think, what ugliness in my life?

What thing that I keep away that I'm afraid of that's, cawing or pulling at me? If I open my arms and I welcomed this thing because it's the life that I have, how would that be different? You know, and I think about events in my life I really didn't want to have.

Awful experiences of sickness or loss.

And I think it it's not that I would ever open my arms and welcome those experiences back. It's not that I wouldn't, you know, choose not to have them if somebody gave me a choice. Like, do you want cancer or not cancer? It's not a hard choice.

But if I could learn more to open my arms to those difficulties, to open my arms to those things, like this swirling difficulty we had with this decision or, like, the surprising things that come up from leading an organization. You know, surprising difficulties. If I could open my arms to them and wonder about in what way are they beautiful, that changes. It changes who I am, it changes what's possible, it changes what they are. This is what this piece of art called to me and reminds me of. And why why she matters here, why the sculpture matters here.

Yeah. And when we try to do difficult things like live, parent, love, work, create, all the things are difficult. All the things are difficult. When we try to do difficult things, if we could find more space in us for the beauty of the difficulty. Not always, and not immediately, but maybe eventually.