The teal sleeve of my 9 year-old niece Josie, who held several elections among her stuffed animals. "My stuffies made a better decision than America," she told me. "Never lament casually," said the late, great Leonard Cohen. "And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity and beauty.”
And so in this week since the election of Donald Trump, I have said very little. I have not joined the nightly disruptions to life-as-usual in Portland - lampooned as "white riots" by Dave Chapelle on Saturday Night Live.
I'm taking some time to consider the focus and the form of my lament... considering: What happened such that Donald Trump seemed like a good idea to the people who voted for him? Is his election a betrayal of all that landed on these shores to become America, or its fulfillment?
I'm immensely grateful to have had the chance to attend, for three years now, the Orphan Wisdom School, where Stephen Jenkinson troubles us with such questions, including the biggest of all: How do we love a dying culture?
Two days before the election Stephen visited Portland unexpectedly, speaking for an afternoon to nearly 90 people assembled with less than a week's notice. He spoke in and of "the syntax of sorrow, the grammar of the gone, the manner of mortal mystery." Unwilling to collude with "the mania for fixing things that is everywhere," he made the case for increasing our emaciated appetite for "real heartbreak and the tutelage that comes from it."
His plea: To swivel our chair alongside the young people, to try to see what they see. "It's not the world you were born to. That's not coming back. In their eyes is the end of most of what you believe." Be willing to learn the end of all you hold dear, he asked. That's the act of love I'm asking of you.
The night after the election Amber and I took my 9 year-old niece Josie to a neighborhood vigil for loving kindness. Several hundred gathered outside the high school holding candles. Voices of sorrow were witnessed by flames held high. "This Little Light of Mine" was sung, with impromptu verse after verse upholding all that is at risk. The angry face of grief marched by the thousands just a few miles away, shutting down two interstate highways. This gathering we joined sought to elevate kindness.
I recited a poem on "the rhythm of kindness" posted on Election Day by a friend. And when it came time to speak my own mind, I voiced my gratitude for the Water Protectors at Standing Rock, that we would have them in our midst at this time, insisting on a bigger story.
While I will find other words and actions, one week now after the Election, I stand by what I wrote that first night: Beneath the storm clouds of catastrophe that have gathered over this idea called America since our founding, there is goodness, and beauty, and love, and kinship - and that's what I'm determined to amplify in every way I can.
And so in this week since the election of Donald Trump, I have said very little. I have not joined the nightly disruptions to life-as-usual in Portland - lampooned as "white riots" by Dave Chapelle on Saturday Night Live.
I'm taking some time to consider the focus and the form of my lament... considering: What happened such that Donald Trump seemed like a good idea to the people who voted for him? Is his election a betrayal of all that landed on these shores to become America, or its fulfillment?
I'm immensely grateful to have had the chance to attend, for three years now, the Orphan Wisdom School, where Stephen Jenkinson troubles us with such questions, including the biggest of all: How do we love a dying culture?
Two days before the election Stephen visited Portland unexpectedly, speaking for an afternoon to nearly 90 people assembled with less than a week's notice. He spoke in and of "the syntax of sorrow, the grammar of the gone, the manner of mortal mystery." Unwilling to collude with "the mania for fixing things that is everywhere," he made the case for increasing our emaciated appetite for "real heartbreak and the tutelage that comes from it."
His plea: To swivel our chair alongside the young people, to try to see what they see. "It's not the world you were born to. That's not coming back. In their eyes is the end of most of what you believe." Be willing to learn the end of all you hold dear, he asked. That's the act of love I'm asking of you.
The night after the election Amber and I took my 9 year-old niece Josie to a neighborhood vigil for loving kindness. Several hundred gathered outside the high school holding candles. Voices of sorrow were witnessed by flames held high. "This Little Light of Mine" was sung, with impromptu verse after verse upholding all that is at risk. The angry face of grief marched by the thousands just a few miles away, shutting down two interstate highways. This gathering we joined sought to elevate kindness.
I recited a poem on "the rhythm of kindness" posted on Election Day by a friend. And when it came time to speak my own mind, I voiced my gratitude for the Water Protectors at Standing Rock, that we would have them in our midst at this time, insisting on a bigger story.
While I will find other words and actions, one week now after the Election, I stand by what I wrote that first night: Beneath the storm clouds of catastrophe that have gathered over this idea called America since our founding, there is goodness, and beauty, and love, and kinship - and that's what I'm determined to amplify in every way I can.
THE RHYTHM OF EACH
by Mark Nepo
I think each comfort we manage-
each holding in the night, each opening
of a wound, each closing of a wound, each
pulling of a splinter or razored word, each
fever sponged, each dear thing given
to someone in greater need-each
passes on the kindness we've known.
For the human sea is made of waves
that mount and merge till the way a
nurse rocks a child is the way that child
all grown rocks the wounded, and how
the wounded, allowed to go on, rock
strangers who in their pain
don't seem so strange.
Eventually, the rhythm of kindness
is how we pray and suffer by turns,
and if someone were to watch us
from inside the lake of time, they
wouldn't be able to tell if we are
dying or being born.
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