The blues.  If you know anything about the blues, you are likely aware that American musician B.B. King, an acknowledged master of the blues, died last week at the age of 89. Accolades poured in from all over the world.  King's influence was vast, and stretched over many, many decades, shaping the music of countless musicians and composers along the way.
     Anyone, King often said, can do the blues.  If we can think about life in colors, we see the truth of his observation.  Although we can identify many colors, all of them usually bright, to describe a life going well, we often use blue to portray a life suffering downturn.  The blues know that life, as the Buddha observed millennia ago, contains misery and suffering, and that despite its many and awesome glories and wonders, life can often be a difficult experience.  We may praise our existence, but at times we lament what it brings us.
     Yet the blues also know that lament is not permanent, that even at its darkest (bluest) life teems with hope.  For some bluesmen, it is a hope grounded in God.  For others, it is the hope that existence is inherently good.  For still others, it is both.  Either way, the blues understand the complexity of life, that life is far more than black and white, far more than belief or unbelief, far more than agnosticism or dogma.  The blues know that life is subject, and life is verb, being as well as becoming.
     The blues grasp that whatever else we do, we live, live humbly and circumspectly in a broken yet thoroughly beautiful world.