"For many days, I write and rewrite these words by hand and then I am paralyzed. Struck dumb. Afraid to write. Silenced by the depth of my attachment to them, silenced at the example of sheer moral greatness and the sense that after these words there is, perhaps should be, nothing to say.
"What kind of life, what kind of living is suggested by the Beatitudes? Perhaps equally important, what virtues are not mentioned . . . elided, simply left out?
"Most striking: the bourgeois virtues. There is nothing about honesty, keeping your word, paying your debts, placing yourself in the right place in relation to authority or hierarchy. Mercy, peacemaking, poverty of spirit, purity of heart (the body is not mentioned here). The sexually well-behaved are not given a place.
"A pastel palette, tender shades, quiet tones. A world that is safer and more generous. A world that honors the inner intention more than the outward achievement.
"The trumpets, the primary colors, enter only with the mention of a hunger and thirst for righteousness, a willingness to suffer persecution for its sake. In some translations, 'righteousness' is rendered 'justice.'
"When I complained to a wise friend that it was impossible to live up to all the Beatitudes — how can you be both meek and hungering for justice — she told me no one was meant to live up to all of them, that was the glory of them. There were so many, they allowed for many different types of people to be blessed. A refusal then, of singularity. An insistence on a multiplicity of ways. Ways of living, ways of being blessed.
"Some translators substitute 'Happy' for 'Blessed.' This will never do. I do not know how to finish a sentence beginning with 'I' and including the word 'Jesus.' But I know that I want the relationship to have less to do with happiness than the selection, protection, and exaltation the word 'blessing' implies."
