with a beaucoup of wishful thinking, i’m thinking we are there. at the lowest ebb. at the tide turning.
but the reality is that there are lower and lower ebbs – abyss-ebbs – inescapable rock-bottom ebbs – nadir-ebbs – and it appears that this administration is headed there.
i am holding onto henry wadsworth longfellow’s words. i am looking for – counting on – wholeheartedly relying on – desperately clinging to – the turn of the tide.
for surely we – as a nation – are better than this.
it’s been just over four months now and i no longer recognize this nation.
i was clearly delusional, thinking we lived in a steady democracy where people valued people, where love and equity and fairness and compassion were paramount, where being our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers was important – even cherished, where we strove to provide opportunity to all regardless of any differences, where checks and balances ensured lawful practices, where collaborative government transcended singular power-mongering, where the natural beauty and environmental sustenance of sea to shining sea was protected, where the arts and education and healthcare and the citizenry vote were rights endowed upon all, where those protecting the country – like my own sweet poppo – were cared for, where those-with helped those-without, where the citizens celebrated their own ancestral and immigrant heritage just as new immigrants were welcomed and embraced, where families, friends, neighbors, communities, the country strove to be unified – together – against disenfranchising or marginalizing others and placing them in harm’s way, where a collective moral conscience embodied decency, where unbridled, vile corruption did not reign supreme.
i was wrong.
this kind of utter shameful disappointment is only overshadowed by one thing:
it was the last arch on the map without going backcountry. we stared down the long hill, weighing the opportunity to see it against the very hot sun and our very tired elevation-trail-challenged bodies. we chose the opportunity to see it.
i’ll never forget the first time i saw this incredible place. our daughter videotaped my reaction – gleeful that i was teary-eyed from the beauty. “i think she likes it!” she quipped.
we left the rest of the group on the top of the hill and started to hike down. and down. and down. tunnel arch pulled us – our thoughts – go now for when will we be back? – drawing us further downhill, even knowing we would need to hike back up.
it was absolutely worth it. the sun was getting lower in the sky over the arch and blue sky shined through the perfect circle worn into the red rock. opportunity knocked and we answered. and, despite the tough uphill, we were grateful to have seen this stunning sight.
opportunity is funny like that. you know that there are sacrifices as well as rewards. and you need to sort it out, choose that which balances you, fulfills you. in this case, immersion in arches national park – as much as possible for that day – was our choice.
and that light. the red rock glowed, the sage was lit. there was no way to succumb to feeling tired at the bottom of the trail we had just taken.
instead, the sunlight was invigorating, outlining the graceful curves of the arch, tempting us to hike closer. had there been time – and had our pals not been waiting on the crest of the hill – we would have hiked into tunnel arch itself.
i can imagine nestling against the curve of its wall, soaking in the sunlight, resting from the day. i can imagine that the sun would have replenished the energy we needed to rejoin our friends, to hike out, to finish this glorious day. i imagine that the sun would have swept away any vestiges of tiredness, replacing those with gratitude and awe.
tunnel arch offered us an opportunity. and in taking that very opportunity i was reminded of martin luther king jr’s words:
“my place is in the sunlight of opportunity.”
sunlight. opportunity.
“we have before us the glorious opportunity to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization.”
opportunity. love.
“…we have an opportunity to make america a better nation.”
opportunity. america.
vote for sunlight. vote for awe, for love, for the gloriousness of this sacredly beautiful nation. vote for opportunity.
“all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small. all things wise and wonderful, ’twas god that made them all.” (cecil francis alexander/edwin george monk/george mcbeth mcphee)
the striking thing about this song – a hymn in the united methodist hymnal i played from for many years as a minister of music – is the use of the word all.
whatever deity you may subscribe to, whatever you call a greater power, whatever your heart-faith attaches to, all things count, all creatures great and small.
i glanced up while at the sink washing a few dishes. and there, on the white trim next to the window, was this katydid. she didn’t seem to feel in peril – and she wasn’t. my first reaction was surprise. my second reaction was wondering how to safely remove her and place her out in the garden, where she might find leaves or flowers to munch, maybe drink from a fallen raindrop.
“each little flower that opens, each little bird that sings. he made their glowing colors and. made their tiny wings.”
it is not our first inclination to eliminate that which is different, that – because of size difference – which is helpless. we try – in most cases – to help the tiniest find its way. this katydid was lost in our house and likely would not have survived if we hadn’t found it and if we weren’t helping it along. it somehow feels like the same story as us – here in the universe. we are but tiny specks of dust, floating, floating, in a galaxy of stars and planets, lost and found, lost and found.
“the purple headed mountains, the rivers running by, the sunset and the morning that brightens up the sky.”
it is up to us to take notice, to care for – across our land, around our world – the extraordinarily large and the astonishingly tiny.
we are all here together.
and i hope that if someday we are lost, someone will gently pick us up and carry us to the garden so that we, too, might munch on flowers, drink raindrops and breathe fresh air available to all creatures great and small.
i read her text more than once, “imagine, over 500,000 americans who will no longer contribute to the whole.” it is unfathomable to wrap your mind around this and, yet, the devastation continues. some of this country’s governors, whipping off their masks, merrily open their state-doors to this insidious disease and more americans will lose their lives, their parents, their spouses, their sons, their daughters. for what end? so that people might visit disney on spring vacation? so that people might step out of their covid-isolated lives and ignore all that has been scientifically proven as critical aids to move the country forward? so that people might selfishly tote variants back in their carry-ons from warm hot-spots, from tourist attractions, from margaritaville, from breaks that could break us all?
i wear a small chain on my left wrist. it is literally ceiling fan chain. we found the pack of chain on my dad’s workbench in florida years ago, sometime during the period of years that both of my parents were moving to a different plane of existence. both d and i chose to wrap this chain around our wrists to mark my poppo and each time i see it, i think of him. we speak of him. we speak of my sweet momma. i keep them around – purposefully, intentionally. i want their mark on the world to be present.
a family in boston lost their father, neil, only 78 years old, to covid last april. a man who embraced life with wide open arms, his family wants to memorialize him and find a way to keep his engaged and engaging spirit in the world. their plan? to get a word he made up for a college assignment years ago – orbisculate – into the dictionary. ‘when citrus fruit squirts on you’ is the ready definition. the complete and official definition is: 1) to accidentally squirt juice and/or pulp into one’s eye, as from a grapefruit when using a spoon to scoop out a section for eating. 2) to accidentally squirt the inner content from fruits, vegetables and other foods onto one’s face, body or clothing, or onto that of a person nearby. the website has a variety of links for blogposts and goals and faq’s, ways to contribute to the important charity this lovely family has chosen to support and a petition you can sign to help move this effort forward, keep their dad around.
after her text, i spent some time thinking about the 500,000 plus beautiful souls no longer on this earth – simply because of covid, a pandemic with some preventable losses. how might we memorialize each of these people? how might we keep them present – in their own concentric circles, in their community, in the whole wide world? how might we intentionally remember?
to what end are we willing to go to not lose any more people to this virus? to what end are we each willing to sacrifice the smaller picture for the bigger picture? to what end are we willing to agree to unite in a continued compassionate endeavor to mitigate this?
and, with a nod to the brilliant idea category of this bostonian family, how will the dictionary accommodate over 500,000 new words – all of which would be worthy were each of these mortals to have their own special thingamajig-word and definition. and i hope they do.
poppochain: (noun): 1) bracelet made of inexpensive ceiling fan chain, typically worn wrapped around wrist 2) a physical reminder of enormous love 3) memorial of my sweet poppo, 1920-2012.
i touch the poppochain on my left wrist and, suddenly, i want to go peel a grapefruit.
*****
we orbisculate over to you for your haiku-turn. let them know!
when we went to hippy tom’s farm and wandered around, browsing, i was overwhelmed by feeling like we were inside a sickness – a hoarding personality – and i felt trapped and breathless. it was too much for me. we drew in deep lungs full of air when we left, shedding the layers of dusty disorder. we were fortunate; we never had to return there. we wished him, the sale of his inordinately massive barns-full and sheds-full and yards-full of stuff well, and left, returning to some degree of normalcy, some degree of air on the county highway back home.
these past four years have felt that way. we have been trapped inside the narcissistic and delusional sickness of the president of the united states. we have hovered in the dark recesses of his self-indulgence and in the rhetoric of his hate-speech, his divisiveness, his zeal to promote violence. we have lingered in his vitriol.
we are a nation, in its spacious skies, its amber waves, its purple mountain majesty, that needs air.
the words of joe and jill biden on thanksgiving made me weep. words of unity, words of solidarity, words of hope, words of recognition of the need to heal. these words, spoken by people who feel like real people rather than physical manifestations of psychological sickness, are words that inspire. the president-elect and the first-lady, in waiting.
we look to this light. new times. new leadership. new air.
and we are grateful. for normal. simply that. normal.
you can’t unhear it or unknow it or unsee it. in any circumstance. at any time. that, alone, gives me pause.
these times, amped up, when people have been foaming at the mouth and spewing vitriol, have been enlightening and have turned the spotlight on these wise words – words cautioning how we speak, how we act, what we do, what we condemn or uplift, what we profess.
decades ago i directed a youth choir in florida. they were performing in concert and their last piece was the song “true colors“. i purchased large swaths of different colored cellophane, body-sized sheets, which they held up in front of them as they sang, “and i see your true colors shining through. i see your true colors and that’s why i love you. so don’t be afraid to let them show, your true colors, true colors are beautiful…like a rainbow.” as they finished they let the cellophane in front of them gently drop to the floor, draping around their feet. exposed, in their own true colors, they stood.
we are exposed. the true colors are showing. and this nation is none too pretty. 71 million people in our country vehemently supported the current reigning president for the position of leader-of-the-free-world as 75 million voted for change. and now, the 71 million, led by their tantrum-throwing leader, are not letting the good man who won win.
i have been stunned time and again throughout the last few years as i watched people close and far, by proximity, by relation, by partisan lines, stand with a person who is as close to the definition of evil that i can point to in recent times. i have asked questions, i have researched, i have pointedly disagreed, i have been horrified.
where has the collective moral compass gone? or did i miss the memo that stated self-serving agenda was the sole soul choice on the menu?
it is astonishing to watch people line up behind a pathological liar narcissist. astounded time and again, i’ve been overwhelmed reading or hearing the words of the complicit comrades in his sociopathic administration. astounded time and again, i’ve been struck by the echoes of these same sentiments in people who i would have thought knew better. angry words rat-a-tat through the country like automatic weapons leashed upon non-followers. falsehoods and pretense, derogatory and snide, spread like rapid fire. a true lack of moral compass, lack of principle has led the corrupt way and 71 million people have jumped on the furious bandwagon, jumping up and down with unmasked glee, screaming the anger they have dislodged from the depths of their souls. it is staggering. and unforgettable. and utterly terrifying.
every thing counts. every word uttered. every action taken. every everything. those things do not just disappear, vanishing into a fog of wishing-it-different. instead, they linger in the universe and something shifts in what you know about others.
those words – the ones they pummeled you with – are hard to unhear. those actions – the ones with which they affected lives – are impossible to unsee. those ideals – the ones that align with the malignant soul who sits as the current president – are unbearable and simply cannot be unknown.
some true colors are just not beautiful like a rainbow.
the wreckage of this nation is smoldering. ill-intention was unleashed on this country four years ago and it is time to douse the fires of hatred and division and suppression and aggrandized self-serving agenda. it is time to steer away from the fire. it’s time to vote.
the populace of this nation is trembling. adrenaline has pumped, non-stop, for the last four years and it is time to take a breath. it is time to reach with compassion and care across the obvious aisle of race, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, religion. it is time to come down off ladders of audacity, rungs that few ever touch; time to make the united states of america united as-best-we-can, time to stop the divisiveness, now pervasive everywhere. it is time to recognize that there is much work to be done, if we can even attempt to slightly level the playing field for each citizen in a nation that proclaims to be in the always-flux of forming a more perfect union. it’s time for healing. it’s time to vote.
individual voices in this nation are fading. this administration has ceased to listen. it has ceased to give concern to fact, to science, to medical expertise, to any one or any thing that gets in its narcissistic way. it is grounding down to stumps the stalwart voices of reason, the wise words of those with prowess, masters in their fields. and then, this administration grinds the stump into ashen piles of wood-soot, calling names, firing shots from the hip at masters in their careers, and claiming an autonomy on knowledge. it’s time to vote.
the democracy of this nation is at risk. the administration of the last four years has undermined it, assailed it, pummeled it, ripped it from its roots with nary a backward remorseful glance. truth has been shredded. diplomacy shattered. fear-mongering has come out of its dark cavern of danger. virtue is missing in action. it’s time to vote.
diana ross sang, “do you know where you’re going to? do you like the things that life is showing you; where are you going to? do you know?”
dave matthews answers, “vote. you want to be part of what’s steering our future.”
time is about up. it’s time to know. it’s time to steer. it’s time to vote.
i, like so many others, want to scream “FIGURE IT OUT!”
in a nation crumbling under leadership pushing division and counting on a so-called “patriotic” movement of the populace to want to climb aboard its sick agenda-ridden wagon, i want to look people in the eye and ask them to please figure it out.
figure out that you are being accosted with aggressive propaganda, with misinformation, with bigotry and false pretenses of protectionism. in our country, this means you are being intravenously fed with distorted falsehoods, warped promises, extreme nationalism in a round-globe-world where this country is simply one of almost 200.
figure out that this disinformation is feeding into the frenzy. in our town, this means that a 17 year old boy from just over the state line strapped on his AR-whatever, got in the car, reportedly had his mother drive him (holding his automatic-people-killer) to our town where he played cowboy vigilante and took the lives of two people during protests for social injustice. this frenzy is dishing out the sickening sweet saccharin of cultish followers in a time of fragile unrest.
figure out that the hate-speech of people is wooing joiners, that words like “be sure to arm yourself and your family and know how to use them” cannot lead to any good thing. in my life, this means people i love disenfranchising themselves from me, detaching and choosing the popular-group lure of strangers, rabidly spewing the hostile talk of animosity.
figure out that you live in a country that is supposed to be dedicated to unity and democracy and that you are being courted to blindly align yourself with a singular individual who has demonstrated all that is opposite to the very ideals, the core of goodness, this country touts. in our world today, figure out what lies are and who is being upheld in the telling of them.
figure out that there is much to fix. this system – our country – is working as systems work – i have learned that they protect to the death the way they are set up and the profoundly, inexcusably unjust way that this country has been set up is glaringly obvious. figure out that fixing it starts in your heart.
figure out that your children and your children’s children will be growing up in this place and choose what you want to leave behind for them. is it a place of peace, of equality, of truth, of health, of gently holding this fragile earth, of clean air and clean water and fertile land, of hope and justice and liberty for all?
figure out that life is sacred and that it is lost in a moment. figure out what truly means anything to you. figure out the bottom line. figure out that love is truly the answer, the place to begin. figure out that those you love count and, for heaven’s sake, let them know. and then look out, to others standing beyond those you already love, and love them too.
this morning i am devoid of color. like many of you, i had a day – for me it was yesterday – that shook me to the core. in the midst of all the bootstrap-pulling and the sisu-garnering we are mustering, angst pushed its way to the surface. i stood in front of my piano and it started. it didn’t stop until i laid my face on the pillow to rest, late last night, and then it woke me in the middle of the night, poking me into the place where you stare into the dark, imploring your mind to stop. if you were there too, in the middle of angst yesterday, we were in solidarity.
this morning i am devoid of color. apparently, for the whole of my life, i have not been as brutally aware of the chasms in this country as i am now. we are not really one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. and the rose-colored glasses that birthed loyalty have slid off our collective faces. this country is as divided as they come. it is as inequitable as they come. and woefully, it is as shallow as they come.
this morning i am devoid of color. in the middle of a global pandemic the leaders of this country are failing us. jousts of economic strategy are thrust into this health-terror; federal taunts of get-it-for-yourself set the stage, the precedent, a hideous example for a people intent on self-servingness. we see the curtain pulled on what is important to people and we are appalled.
this morning i am devoid of color. the in-fighting pales in comparison to the cavalier buttressing of parties. yes. “red and blue america are not experiencing the same pandemic.” we can’t have conversation because that would involve honest communicating. we can’t seek truth because who could then be blamed? we can’t even talk because we are too angrily disparate to talk. tilting my kitchen chair back on two legs as we read aloud the news i feel the earth tilt under me and i hold onto the table.
we are not on the same page, we of this country. this pandemic, capable of uniting us in working to flatten the curve of its dread, is further dividing us. information is warped; information is withheld. facts – facts! – are play-doh-molded into whatever pushes forth agenda. there are two distinct camps of thought and nary shall they meet. this has generated an opportunity, a ploy, for more polarity; we see it, experience it, up close and personal. and, to add insult to injury, the great divide, the vast difference between those-who-have and those-who-don’t is exposed like a compound fracture. despite sixty years on this earth, i have never seen it more clearly. and it is staggering.
this morning i am devoid of color. fear has drained the color from my face. i want us, my husband and i, to stay healthy. i desperately want my beloved children to stay healthy. i earnestly want my parents-in-law to stay healthy, our siblings, our families, our extended families, our friends. but the misinformation war has put us in peril. this insidious virus is sweeping the globe and we are in danger. that, at its root, should not be a question or a bargaining chip. it should not be ignored nor should it be conflated to suit agenda. it should be factual, pragmatic, cautious, proactive, seeking answers, results and healing of lives – indivisible – for all.
so many people in this nation, practicing goodness. but this nation? this nation has a choice to make.
this morning i am devoid of color. i am deeply disappointed. i am afraid.
reverse threading 