We Shall Overcome
It is starting to be better.

After that first morning, when I walked outside and sunk into a brilliant day of silent streets, it began. Iced with smooth aqua, the city gleamed in the cold air. In place of the nearly tangible tension of the day before, the streets were silent. Everything was low whispers, dry leaves grating on the asphalt in the bitter wind. Then the faces: the red-rimmed eyes, the channels left by night-old tears, the mouths like closed doors. There was comfort in their sadness, bcause we had all been bit players in a failed revolution, and the comfort was the all.

Last night I laughed freely with one who before had filled me with deep-dug bitterness. Love and openness are stronger than we think.

It is starting to be better. In church today, we were told that no story, either of victory or defeat, is final. That despite our frustration, our path still lies before us, unaltered, and we are never done. That victory often breeds hate, because the losers dwell in bitterness, but that we must cling to love, though it be unfashionable. That we can learn to look at those who disagree with us, even those who would hurt us, and see the same human hearts, beating, the same wind filling all our lungs.

"The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Those were the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. Before him, they belonged to Theodore Parker, a Unitarian minister. He was speaking in hope of the abolition of slavery. Thinking on those times, how can we not see the truth of those words? How can we not see that the liberal voices of the world are the ones that still echo the truths of history?