This was the wise grandma blessing Rita Conway gave to grandchild Katie on her maiden college voyage.  'Have fun and play hard!'

By all accounts, mine included, Mrs. Conway was a remarkable, infatigably genuine woman who couldn't keep herself from loving you, you who stands before her at this moment, even had she tried.  And why would she try?

We buried Rita yesterday.  In her memory, I hold up some creative souls I've noticed lately, hard at play.  As with Rita's life, their potent love inspires me.

Sour, a band from Japan, makes a music video out of geometrically choreographed fan clips.  The music is good, the editing tight, the effect - a kaleidoscope of community.  YouTube excels at this.  This is what people choosing to pool their strengths for the sake of a worthy project looks like.

Love with legs.  That's what Serene Jones, president of Union Theological Seminary, calls justice.  She and her cohorts shepherd would-be pastors to pastures of plenty.  Plenty of need.  Plenty of problem solving.  And the need is fairly divided between the poor who need opportunity and the elite who need meaning richer than accumulated wealth. 

Justice is nothing but love with legs. Justice is what love looks like when it takes social form.
Serene Jones, Bill Moyers Journal

Prosperity - posterity - depend on this version of hard play.

And what exactly is posterity?  Bill Moyers asks double Pulitzer Prize winning poet (accolades never fail to impress, no?) W. S. Merwin if he's more concerned with posterity now, in his 80s, than in his youth.

The poet, like good poets everywhere, specializes in love with legs.  The legs of his poems become those of his listeners.  When he reads Yesterday, hearers rush from the reading to call their fathers.

So when asked about posterity, Merwin has a simple answer.

Posterity is right now. Posterity is Bill Moyers. Or posterity is the people who responded to "Yesterday" by going home and calling their fathers. That's what I love is to make that connection of experience to experience.
W. S. Merwin, Bill Moyers Journal

Posterity is now.  People contacting their parents when a poem contacts them in places of turbulent need - places of generosity, where selfishness had thrived.  Of time sharing where time hoarding had been the norm.  Of cherishing - the underused muscle of our day.

A good sermon, like a good woman, calls us out of our perilous indifference into a brighter, safer world.  Love with legs.  Love with play.  Love with posterity in its corpuscles, joy in its hip pocket.

Rita M. Conway, rest in peace.  Have fun and play hard now.  We have your legs!

Photo Art Weber, Rita and Mim Conway