Our Work has Just Begun

Sunday early morning light on the pond

The trees are mostly bare now except for the tree trunk that fell into the pond last summer. It’s leaves, brown and shriveled, cling to the downed tree’s branches. Cut off from its roots (the brains of the tree), the leaves don’t know how to let go.

Though at first I saw the fallen tree as a terrible eyesore now I see it as a shelter for ducks, a part of the landscape. It reminds me every day of the cycles of life. Those cycles turn whether we want them to or not.

As this election cycle is over, many want to relax and forget politics. Though many are celebrating Biden’s win and are ready to relax and believe that all will be well now, I am filled with cautious relief and a knowledge that

Our Work has just Begun

To heal the many challenges we face will take many people humbly doing small things every day to contribute to the arc of justice, dealing with climate change, caring for one another, and learning to practice loving kindness for all. There are countless challenges ahead. The world has changed in ways that we may not yet realize.

We must allow ourselves to feel and experience the truth of this moment and who we are as a nation.

Almost half of us voted for a bully and liar who has failed to lead us, shown contempt for countless people, and shown us a type of selfishness that cares little for others or the future.

Tuesday night as I watched the election returns the reality of who we are as nation hit me deeply. I could no longer deny the deep challenges that we face. What will we do now? Can we find ways to cross the great divide? Will our democracy survive and learn to thrive again?

Rainy Days and Mondays

Today is a rainy day and a Monday so I apologize in advance if this brings you down. Though heavy, my own belief is that it is still hopeful with a hope based in truth, not airy fairy wishes.

I happened upon a poem by W. B Yeats that expressed the fears that I was sheltering deep in my heart afraid to express lest they prove true. Though it is not a happy poem, I share it with you today as a reminder that there is still much work to do to help heal our country. I join those who celebrate Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’ victory but I do so with the knowledge that it may be a turning point but it is a not a panacea or a reason to relax into the belief that all is well.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

    — W. B. Yeats

This poem was written by Yeats in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War and in the midst of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic. It put into words his feelings of that time that the world would never be the same again. I actually find hope from reading it, knowing that there are times when everything feels impossible but the world goes on. Here we are a century later dealing with our own apocalyptic times— the Trump years, climate change and pandemic. But despite Yeats pessimistic feelings about the times he was living in, the cycles continued and seasons turned one to another and yet another.

I’ll leave you today with a more hopeful poem, Song of the Builders by Mary Oliver.

Song of the Builders

On a summer morning

I sat down

on a hillside

to think about God –

 

a worthy pastime.

Near me, I saw

a single cricket;

it was moving the grains of the hillside

 

this way and that way.

How great was its energy,

how humble its effort.

Let us hope

 

 

it will always be like this,

each of us going on

in our inexplicable ways

building the universe.

   — Mary Oliver

I hold both of these poems—both realities—in my heart along with the knowledge that our work has just begun.

May you walk in beauty.

Two shoveler ducks in the pond Sunday morning circling and dipping, circling and dipping, like a dance.

The deck swing frame stands empty on the side of the deck prepared for the coming winter.