Let Us Not Lose Heart

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We get these amazing low tides now and then at this time of year. Negative tides. It's fascinating to walk way out and stand where water usually is, to peer into pools, see hidden rocks revealed, curiosities uncovered. It feels like another planet.And I know it's a bit of a stretch, but it occurred to me that maybe we're at a sort of low tide period in our nation's history right now.  What had been beneath the surface and is now exposed is ugly, not wondrous, but these things have been there all along, and it's crucial that we face them.Or maybe it's more like the underpinnings of a house...it might appear that the place is being ripped apart, but some dismantling is necessary to eliminate the rot beneath the floorboards, the corrosion in the pipes, the toxic chemicals in the walls, all the flaws and weaknesses that are going to be corrected once and for all and would have been our downfall.

Yes, I realize this is simplistic, but I need to believe something like this, so I choose to see it as possible. This is an extremely disillusioning and discouraging time, and we are going to have to turn things around, and somehow...we will.  Let us not lose heart.Meanwhile, Thanksgiving is approaching. I feel humble and grateful for many reasons, every day, as well as alarmed and sad and baffled.  And I think the following poem of thanks by W.S. Merwin powerfully expresses the irrational, contradictory, defiant, insistent sense of human gratitude felt even in the most troubled times.  It's like a song we have to sing...and besides, there are no times that are not troubled. The world is imperfect, messy, cruel, and unjust...full of mystery and tragedy, beautiful and terrible in every moment...but we persist in trying to make sense of it. We are here,  bearing witness and doing our best, and we are saying thank you.

THANKS by W.S. Merwin

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you

we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings

we are running out of the glass rooms

with our mouths full of food to look at the sky

and say thank youwe are standing by the water thanking it

standing by the windows looking out

in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging

after funerals we are saying thank you

after the news of the dead

whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you

in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators

remembering wars and the police at the door

and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank youi

n the banks we are saying thank you

in the faces of the officials and the rich

and of all who will never change

we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us

taking our feelings we are saying thank you

with the forests falling faster than the minutes

of our lives we are saying thank you

with the words going out like cells of a brain

with the cities growing over us

we are saying thank you faster and faster

with nobody listening we are saying thank you

thank you we are saying and waving

dark though it is