Metaphors are rolling around in my head today, colliding and bouncing off each other.

“If we come together, we can mend the crack in the sky.” A line from a piece we are learning for Music Sunday by Jake Runestad. The easiest part of the piece, sung in English with the melody that is on repeat in my head, “If we come together, we can mend the crack in the sky,” is a Somali proverb.

And these words and this melody stand in opposition to Leonard Cohen’s “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

I sing in my head, back and forth in conversation, as if they are both questions, as if they are both answers.

Are we a broken society that needs to be put together again, or are we a society that has grown and experienced swings of the pendulum and the huge crack is letting enough light in to experience massive change? Do we stuff the fascists back into their Pandora’s box or do we open the cracks wide and absorb and transform all that divides us? Which and what, can we do together? 

It brings to mind another favorite metaphor about transformation: The chrysalis of butterflies, the protective pupa stage occurring after the caterpillar and before the adult. Caterpillar tissue breaks down and is transformed. Our society is no longer a humble caterpillar and nowhere near the gorgeous butterfly, but are we in the goo of transformation?  Or are we still holding onto a few vital organs that we can’t yet believe we will have to let go of, let go to dissolve into goo, before the new, what is to come, begins to form. 

Today, I need to believe that transformation will happen.

Sometimes I don’t know whether I, whether Julia and I, are strong enough, resilient enough, to endure however long our societal transformation will take. We are in such a cruel, narrow, unyielding place right now. And the fact that there is no guarantee that after this awful time, our world will be filled with love and acceptance—DEI, Habeas Corpus, and civil rights for everyone, including those who are more different from the extreme right than any of them can imagine. And support, yes, very personally, I want there to be support for those who are not typical, those whose minds and bodies need guidance, kindness, and healing.  

Wherever we are today—patching cracks with gold, expanding minds with cracks lit by the sun, or thigh-deep in the goo, standing together with friends and neighbors helps. We are stronger for the company, less afraid with the community.

Julia, Ed, and I went to the Newton No Kings demonstration today. Speakers, including one of our ministers, inspired and called on us to chant, keep on working, and believe in the transformation. It was beautiful. I could hear how complaints and demonstrations are slowly turning into a movement, slowly growing leaders who might lead this transformation. Pictures of New York, Chicago, Boston emerge. People are posting in Madison, Austin, and Jersey towns. Comments from these pictures are enthusiastic, and I can almost see how we might change. But some pictures from Indiana friends come with comments from the other side that are more of what we’ve endured already. And those comments bring me pause. There is so much work to do.

But for today, within the safety of a Blue state, I will let the hate of “christians” and “conservatives” grow quiet and revel in what we have today.

In Newton today:

I forgot to add links to the music, just in case you want to know what is playing on repeat in my brain:

Jake Runestad’s “We can mend the sky”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2bipWtJEIw

And Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8-BT6y_wYg