Onward

I was describing our daily singing time to some students in my workshop today and mentioned how sometimes the songs with more complex lyrics go over the heads of the first graders. But that’s a good thing. That’s how we grow and evolve. By being in community with others who are further down the path from us or a bit higher up the mountain and reach back to pull us up.

And amidst 10,000 things wrong with what’s about to come down next Friday, this sense of having no one above to encourage our better and more intelligent and kinder selves is high on my list. It’s as if we’ve toiled so hard to scale the mountain and as we reached back, that harsh hand pulled us down and we fell head over heels. It’s like we finally got further down the path and closer to the horizon we’ve dreamed of and then got pulled back to the swamp we worked so hard to crawl out of.

On one level, these is some part of us that can keep ascending and keep progressing, lending hands to others along the way willing to make the arduous journey and those folks back there in the Stone Ages can’t stop us. But let’s not be naïve either. All the spotlights are on the swamp-dwellers. Left in the dark, with resources pillaged from those behind with the big guns, progress will be difficult.

But not impossible. Eventually, one hopes, they will step in quicksand and be sucked down the vortex of their own mean-spirited selves. And meanwhile, we step forward, one foot in front of the other, as best we can, in company with fellow pilgrims.

Onward.