Unthinkable

The other day, a post crossed my path that said, essentially, why would our lawmakers want to make America a land of poor, sick, uneducated, homeless people? The cynical, but I think arguable, answer was something along the lines of, to create powerless slaves for big corporations. It is impossible to understand how leaders with even the slightest iota of true humanity would pass the kinds of laws that are currently making their way through the pipeline. It is literally unthinkable. But the unthinkable seems to have become our bread-and-butter. Forget cake. "Let them eat 'unthinkable.'"

Hopefulness comes and goes with me, but mostly, I am heartened by how, around the edges of what my eyes interpret as a train wreck, real, caring humans are waking up, being heard, insisting on loving and embracing others, and creating beauty and new growth. I remember back in 1989, I visited Yellowstone Park about a year after the terrible fires there. Huge swaths of the Park were blackened, with dead tree stumps as far as the eye could see. Yet on the forest floor were millions of green shoots, even lawns of colorful flowers. The infrastructure had burned to the ground, but the impulse of life and beauty coming from under the surface couldn't be stopped. 

I guess at the moment, that's where I am at with the unthinkable. We clearly see what's happening. Yes, some who currently think themselves powerful may grin like banshees at their clever and selfish manipulation. Many of the rest of us see destruction where our values used to be, and feel nearly left for dead. But we are still very much alive, in some cases being completely reborn, and our verdant shoots will continue to grow. In the end, thankfully, life and love are the only lasting powers-that-be.