Whenever my grandmother gave me money, she always said the same thing, “It’s not much, honey, just a little oil for your lamp.”

I don’t know where the expression comes from and I’ve never heard anybody else use it, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately and saying it to myself whenever I see something beautiful, experience something amazing, read something that moves me.

“There you go,” I say, “there’s a little oil for your lamp.”

In the last month, I have received oil for my lamp from the following things:

the poems of Hafiz (“Your heart and my heart/Are very, very old/Friends”)
trampolines (big ones, bouncing on them with a five-year-old boy
Vuillard’s painting entitled “The Artist’s Mother Opening a Door” (looking at it, I can feel a door open inside of me)

pesto (over pasta, consumed in the backyard of friends)

the songs of Lucinda Williams (most particularly “Sweet Old Word”)

bats (that come out at dusk and swoop over your head as you walk home)

the creek at dawn and the creek at dusk (always green and waiting, full of wonders)
spearmint (growing in my backyard, how incredible is that?)
front steps (warmed by the sun)

back steps (warmed by the sun)

The Best American Short Stories for 2007 (thank you, all you storytellers; and thank you, Stephen King, for doing such a fine job of editing)
dragonflies (with complex patterns painted on their spines)
the full moon rising (and then being lowered slowly, slowly, slowly)

laughing with friends (whose hearts I have known, and who have known my heart, for a very, very long time).

And these things,
all of these things,
are
everything;
they are
a little oil,
a little oil
for the lamp
of my soul.

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