Here we are, at the apex of day-length. I wait for these days all winter, counting the months, then the weeks until we reach this pinnacle of Solstice: the moment where we have the maximum minutes of UV’s, the ultimate intimacy with the sun’s light (which my body somehow craves.) From here the days get infinitesimally shorter, even as our exposure to the sun gets more intense. We will pass through some uncomfortable, even dangerous days before we are wishing again for more time with the sun.
I wonder if we aren’t in a similar
place in the political life of our nation, with all its social
ramifications. Approaching the November
elections, we find ourselves exposed to longer days of political dialogue and
social commentary as the party platforms try to solidify from the inflated
rafts and rubber inner-tubes of the primaries, the mergers of candidate’s
supporters and radicalized voters. At
the local and state levels, the results so far have been sortof predictable,
but the run for President has been momentous enough to capture my
attention. I find myself trying to
understand us as a totality in a way I’ve never attempted before. We will pass through some uncomfortable, perhaps
even dangerous days before we can count the votes, evaluate the results, and
move on gratefully toward Thanksgiving.
And then there’s the events of last
week. The praises for the life of
Muhammed Ali had barely begun to sink into the soft earth of our hearts when
they were machine-gunned by a disturbed man in Orlando and we had to confront
once again the tragedies of violence.
Our cultural aversion to looking at this fact of our lives can be
measured by the media’s knee-jerk reaction.
“Is this Islamic terrorism?” they asked, wanting like the rest of us to find
the cause beyond our borders. It can’t
be us. It can’t be a bad gene in our
cultural DNA. It can’t be that the solo Marlboro
Man image of American masculinity no longer has any hope of being experienced
in our compromised lives or traded in for a more cooperative vision of
man-in-community. It can’t be us, can
it?
There was the
heroic filibuster by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who claimed the floor for 15
hours seeking legislative response to the now-too-common mowing-down of
innocents by madmen with guns. "It
wasn't just that 40 senators came to the floor and supported my effort to get
these votes but there were millions of people all across the country who rose
up and who joined our effort," Murphy said Sunday on ABC's "This
Week." Those Senators put in a very
long day, and I took heart from their actions but the encouragement was short
lived. As of this writing, pundits
expect no meaningful legislation to pass.
It appears that we are lightyears away from overcoming our fears and the
gun lobby’s resistance to limit civilian access to weapons of war. Meanwhile other tragedies occurred that had
nothing to do with assault rifles, including the drowning death of a
two-year-old boy who was towed underwater by an alligator at a Disney resort,
and a young woman British lawmaker who was shot and stabbed to death for
speaking her mind. Dear God, be with the
families, whose days will stretch on like life sentences in solitary confinement
for awhile.
I think we need to look at ourselves
long and hard in light of these events, to make use of the light they
provide. Who do we hate, and why? Who do we fear? What can any one of us do to reduce hate and
fear in the world and to short-circuit the killing response, whether it be
toward alligators or vocal women or young people out for a good time in what
was perceived by them to be a safe haven?
Dear God, be with us on these longest days.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trudy
Wischemann is a regular old heterosexual woman who speaks her mind in
print. You can do the same by writing a
letter to the editor of this paper or leave a comment below.
No comments:
Post a Comment