There's nothing new under the sun

[image description: a photo of Jessica, taken at a distance, as she watches the sun set over a lake. Photo shows grass, trees, water, and a pinkish sun]

Drifting

By Mary Oliver

I was enjoying everything: the rain, the path

wherever it was taking me, the earth roots

beginning to stir.

I didn’t intend to start thinking about God,

it just happened.

How God, or the gods, are invisible,

quite understandable.

But holiness is visible, entirely.

It’s wonderful to walk along like that,

though not the usual intention to reach an

answer

but merely drifting.

Like clouds that only seem weightless.

but of course, are not.

Are really important.

I mean, terribly important.

Not decoration by any means.

By next week the violets will be blooming.

Anyway, this was my delicious walk in the rain.

What was it actually about?

Think about what it is that music is trying to say.

It was something like that.

There is a fox who lives nearby, and for a few weeks, she walked through our backyard at 7:30 each morning. And then one day she skipped her walk and instead sauntered up to our back door around 11am and peered inside. Khalil, David, and I were all a few feet away, staring back. She has only returned once since, on our neighbor Mona’s 60th birthday. 

It snowed a couple of weeks ago, and the mallards who live out back seemed to handle it just bobbing in and out of the water to eat the dried corn we had tossed for them. I googled, and they will, apparently leave with the geese when the lake freezes. 

Our lives feel, during this season, removed from space and time. Facing the water, we see very few, if any, lights after the sun goes down. Because of COVID, our family is still totally isolated. We have been inside two buildings that weren’t our home since February—the customs department at the border and a cardiology office. We live in a new city in a new country in which we have very few memories or associations. It can seem like we don’t live anywhere—like the only thing that actually exists is this house, this yard, this lake, and the animals wandering by. 

We missed Durham while watching videos of the parties in the streets when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won. Here in Ontario, we cried, screamed, danced, and chanted. Canadian friends texted their congratulations. And then as the joy and relief faded, I again found myself obsessing about why Trump and his supporters live in such a different reality from me and my family. Why are Republicans, who a few years ago ardently rejected Trump, now publicly supporting his unfounded and dangerous claims of widespread fraud?

I’m obsessed with it. My mind is constantly tumbling around bits of articles I’ve read. Not only do I fall down the rabbit hole of The New York Times, Ezra Klein, and The Atlantic—I watch sermons from conservative evangelical pastors, I read Breitbart and Fox and scroll through Twitter conspiracy theories. I’m asking myself over and over again, what’s at the root of this and how do we find out way back to each other and ourselves as a country?

I’ve always been curious about cults, brainwashing, and propaganda but now that our country is in a place where words have lost their meaning and ideas of truth and reality are stretching further apart, my interest is personal. Do we need to zoom way out or way in to see each other? How can we communicate when language has completely failed us and shared definitions of truth, freedom, and democracy have crumbled? Does it come down to fear versus love? Scarcity vs abundance? Is it as simple as tribalism? 

One of the hardest lessons of my life is that we can’t change others. How does that apply here?

When I watched the people celebrating Biden’s win and reflected on the hard and beautiful work of the activists who made it happen, I felt a bone-deep relief. Did Trump supporters feel that way in 2016? When I ask that question, I worry that I’m tiptoeing into false equivalency. There have been many times in history during which both sides of a conflict did not have equal merit. Is it time to find common ground or time to admit that the state of our country is in an immediate democratic crisis and react accordingly? 

I don’t know. I think we can look to history, to nature, to God, and inside ourselves for answers. When I sit still and watch the ducks, my mind slows down, and I feel joy and peace. There is a resonance when we connect to what is good and true in the world, in ourselves, and in others. It’s as Mary Oliver says, “Holiness is visible, entirely.”