Release Day: "Whatever Comes Next"
Release Day:
"Whatever Comes Next"
click to listen
art by Kyra Hinton
I would like to raise a toast!
To the new year, of course.
But also to the old year. And the year before that, which overstayed its welcome.
"What even is time anymore?" I've caught myself asking lately. And I don't have an answer.
Other than maybe this, on my more hopeful days: time could be the relentless renewal of possibility that things might change for the better. Hidden deep beneath the cynical shell of my lowest expectations—for myself, others, and this tired world we all share—is an old, forgotten disillusionment, a child who got hurt and decided it would be safest to hide.
What if time is just the invitation that child needs; to come back out and risk playing, to trust that all wrong must and shall be righted, to take delight in the gift of life?
I've got my grown-up list of what I'm fairly sure will come next, based on what has come before. I won't burden you with it. As Brandi Carlile sings, "The kingdom of heaven belongs to a boy, while his worry belongs to a man."
But I believe that one day, I'll shed that old list like an old skin and find a tender new skin in its place. That forgotten child deep inside will tease me, "Who said you couldn't have a happy ending?" I'll know what will come next not by what has come before, but by what has been promised from the very beginning: the overturning and upending of all injustice, a table laid in the wilderness, the discovery of my true name. And nothing will be right side up anymore.
Until then, here's to 2022. May it inch us closer to hope.
-Drew