The One World

 Friday Nov 8 2024

Never has driving to a wedding felt more like driving to a funeral.  What an ugly and joyless time we face.  Tears welled up numerous times as I thought about upcoming losses, including losses in my own family for what might have been but now will never be.  

Here’s some of the music we were listening to on the way through Pennsylvania and Maryland.

Magnificat by J.S. Bach

Mary’s Song.  

Luke 1:53

Esurientes implevit bonis et divites dimisit inanes.

The hungry he has filled with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.

This was always a worthwhile dream, but seems vastly more unreachable now, as we install a full kleptocracy.  We’ve always had oligarchs, but now they are even more in charge.  

Agnus Dei by Samuel Barber

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

Lamb of God…have mercy on us.

But me, I have no scrap of divinity left in me, and I am not feeling merciful.  

America, you have chosen.  You will get what you deserve based on these choices.   And whether it is in the very next election, or one further out but in the near future, you will not have any choice. The choice you made in this election has assured that.  Unless… unless… I have no answers for what will forestall this future.   I tried my best, but it was feeble and not enough.

Have fun with your tariffs, whether they are used as negotiating tools or just put in place across the board in some fool’s pipe dream that foreigners will gladly pay for our well being.  Worldwide recession is the prospect.  If recession doesn’t happen because of that, it will certainly happen when the federal government is decimated by the kakistocracy.  

Cedarwood Road by U2

…

All the green and all the gold

The hurt you hide, the joy you hold

The foolish pride that gets you out the door

…

And sometimes fear is the only place

That we can call our home

Cedarwood Road

…

And a heart that is broken

Is a heart that is open

Open, open

I weep for all of the people who will come under attack for who they are in their being, their sexuality, their ethnicity, their disability, their skin color, their accent, their language.  For all the women who will have no control over their own bodies.  For all the women who will be unable to get adequate healthcare for their wanted pregnancies.  

To all those who said that these hatreds and restrictions will not be codified, they already are, in many places. The hatred and violence, institutionalized or not, will become more widespread.  But please, prove me wrong, America.

On Saturday,  while we were waiting for the right time to go to the wedding ceremony, the Common Household husband and I discussed retirement.  

CHH:  If we both retire, then we could go traveling.  Where would you like to go?

Me:  I don’t want to go anywhere anymore.  This [movement toward authoritarianism] is a worldwide phenomenon.

CHH: This is the only world we have. We can’t go to another world.

And that, my friends, is proof that all roads lead to Mary Oliver.  

Poem of the One World

This morning

the beautiful white heron

was floating along above the water

and then into the sky of this

the one world

we all belong to

where everything

sooner or later

is a part of everything else

which thought made me feel

for a little while

quite beautiful myself.

- Mary Oliver

And so, we got into our fancy clothes, put away our tears for a few hours, and attended to the joy of the wedding couple.  The groom is the youngest child of immigrants from an erstwhile Eastern European dictatorship, a family whom my parents helped to settle in this country, with great success.  The situation now drips with irony.

Mary Oliver, I am having trouble seeing beauty in this the one world, and in myself.