Pure Nard

There is a story in the bible that I love.  Jesus has just returned to visit friends with his followers and this woman who is a hardcore fan breaks open this expensive bottle of "pure nard" (a very bougie version of the perfume - remember most everybody travelled by foot in these days) on Jesus' feet.

The business manager from Jesus's friends FREAKS OUT.  How dare she just use this super expensive perfume for your FEET?  We could use this to feed the poor!

Jesus essentially says:  She did the right thing.  This extravagant gesture is a symptom of her clear vision and love for me.

Now and then I am moved by a song, a story, a movie, a poem in a way that reminds me of pure nard.  The extravagance of the gesture is a measure of the artists love for the characters or the vision or the feeling.  These kinds of stories have a heart that is disconnected from ambition and cunning assessment of the market.  They're not carefully constructed according to formula nor do they feel excessively "commercial."

My friend Cliff made a documentary called Brother Joseph and the Grotto that seemed to be made out of Pure Nard.  Brother Joseph was a man who against outrageous odds, spent 50 years building the Ave Maria Grotto in an abbey in Alabama.

The story is beautiful, the storytelling is beautiful, and the effort and investment made by Cliff is beautiful.  I'm fortunate to know many great friends who have made Pure Nard songs and films or screening spaces or gathering or poems or concerts or storytelling events.   And the experience of Pure Nard is often a subjective one, since motives are never stable or pure and audiences don't always resonate with the same things.  But when they do resonate,  we should say so.

My thing of value for today is Stories Extravagantly Told Out of Love and Hope.

Pure Nard

#50thingsofvalue