DC – The Glorious Disaster - Us So it’s the second day of the year. And so much has already happened. Whatever the last 48 hours were about is over and the present is breaking in again with all of its unsolvableness and confusion. Today I woke up with two problems, one old and one new. Two problems I can’t fix right now. For me that’s the worst part. Linda knows this so as I left the house she admonished me, “You’re going to work and you’re going to stay in the present!” It was good advice but as is often the case it isn’t the substance of the advice that heals me as much as it is the effort and expertise required in giving it. I so enjoyed watching the Winter Classic yesterday. The Washington Capitals and Detroit Blackhawks played outdoors in Nats Park. The Caps won in the last seconds on a great goal. But what I loved the most was the pictures of DC together, having fun, enjoying each other on a cold January day. That’s what I want for this city more than anything. Here on a quiet Friday I know that all over the country people are aggressively pretending they don’t have to come back here in two days. They are enjoying their last dinners at favorite local restaurants and giving out hugs to family before packing up and heading back to “inside-the-beltway.” Like concerned villagers admonishing knights errant to “be true,” conservative friends and liberal friends are warning the travelers to not be seduced by “tea partiers” and “secular humanists.” But Monday morning will come. The cheers at Nats Park will fade for a few more months. A new Congress will be sworn in. And I and all my neighbors will be here with our unsolvable problems, the personal ones, the local ones, and the national and international ones. It’s clear to me that we are utterly incapable of fixing anything for any reasonable length of time. But in that sober fact there is also the certainty that nothing is lost for us. It isn’t the solving of these problems that will define us as much as it is the effort, the love, the creativity, the hopefulness with which we launch our grand schemes that marks us as the children of our maker. And if we start to see these marks in each other we may, somehow, do some good.
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 18:43:52 +0000
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