Reality is Hard...
...and the leaves are turning.
“My way of life Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf.” *
*(Macbeth speaking in “Macbeth, Act 5, scene 3” as he realizes his remaining time is short.)
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I’ve had moments in the not-so-distant past where I might flatter myself as something of a man of action (seriously😉). For at least the last ten years, I’ve regarded myself (metaphorically - if only barely so at times) as a warrior in service of the defeat of the ever-more-loathsome Trump/MAGA movement. I’ve thought of myself as one who might be persuaded to do my small part in organized physical resistance if it were to be vetted and arranged by cooler heads. I have not thought of myself as disposed to suicidal gestures of no positive effect, so I’ve had no reason to this point to venture past talk and gestures.
I’ve haven’t gone out of my way to make any special secret of this. I’ve written (carefully and with restraint) about it more than once. MAGA-types have never struck me on the whole as personalities who could be moved by either reason and knowledge, ordinary human decency, or by naive appeals to the “greater good”. A resentful and vindictive meanness rests in their spirits and at their hearts (I’ve known people like this my entire life). It only required someone of Trump’s uniquely malevolent gifts to awaken it to broad public consumption. I’ve even been slightly contemptuous of those on our side who try so hard to feel differently in the face of what I see as immutable evidence to the contrary.
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This is the unconscious attitude I carried with me when I decided to attend my church in Mount Sterling last Sunday (pictured above). I’m an unpeaceful sleeper at the best of times. An overnight time-change left me tossing and restless. I awoke early. I took advantage to make the drive over for 10:30 am services. I did a few household projects beforehand, so I was in deficit already.
When I arrived, I parked in the back parking lot. I usually park along the street in front (a much shorter entry, pictured above), but I wanted to take a look at our designated family Columbarium spaces on the way in. That’s more easily done from the back lot (these little diversions seem individually harmless, but they will accumulate to a sobering revelation).
Unlike the short and direct entry from the front directly into the main sanctuary, the back entry is somewhat circuitous. One enters at split ground level, traverses the entire length of the large building and arrives at a series of short flights of stairs and landings up at the front. You climb upward into the front nave area and the main sanctuary. I’m sure I’ve done this dozens of times over the years (probably ran up there as a very young man). I know I’ve done this with minimal effort in the last five years.
So I stride confidently into the rear reception area and across thru the first floor Fellowship Hall (Again, nothing new here. I’ve done this many times). I approach the first of four total short flights of stairs and begin my ascent. After maybe five or six steps, something feels ever so slightly…different. I’m stifling pangs of unease🙁. For the first time ever in my memory, I decide that perhaps I should use the handrail. With my new strategy in hand, I defeat the first flight. I rest there on the landing for a moment (again, a first).
As I start up the second flight, it dawns on me that the handrail technique has a weakness: It requires me to walk straight up the stairs and absorb each step’s full height with my full weight. With more than two flights to go, it isn’t going to happen. I wearily achieve the second landing and pause for actually a bit longer than I did on the first landing. My legs trembled. I was sweating. It literally crossed my mind at this point to retreat back down and search-out another route. A rough mental calculation of time and space informed me that no alternative would work. I had to either get there from where I was or be vanquished mid-stairs in the attempt until someone located me there, alive or otherwise🥴.
Necessity is (as ever) the mother of invention. I adjusted my strategy a third and final time: I decided that if I could serpentine my path (something they teach in the military to avoid gunfire) from one side to the other up the stairs while simultaneously shifting from a left to right handrail grip as I went, I had a fair chance of making it to the top. And there it so laboriously (comically? 😉) went.
At the moment just as I reached the summit, I was struck by the absurdity of someone in the nave recognizing me as I stumbled up into view like someone coming from out of the desert. I don’t get there often anymore physically, and I nearly laughed out loud at what they might imagine had happened to me since my last visit (I find things like that both appalling and funny 😁). If I was in fact observed, no one said anything. I can’t say that I blame them 😉.
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So what happened to the “warrior” 🤔? I’m guessing somewhere around the second landing, it was becoming clear to me that it was no longer a part of my destiny to spend actual time on the ramparts. If it were to come to that, someone else would be called-upon to defeat the evildoers. My role will of necessity be one of articulating the case and contributing to the team what I can around the margins. I will certainly try to do that to the best of my ability, but we need more…much, much more.
In fact, I personally believe that to this point, one of the defects of the fight against Trump/MAGA is that too many of us who take this evil threat most seriously are too old to make a serious fight of it if it’s required. Many of us remember the ‘60’s’, but we can no longer put those lessons to practical use. What we might imagine in our memories is not available for the job at hand today.
We need the physical strength, intelligence, and energy of younger people. I don’t think we can entirely succeed without them. It’s a big part of my generation’s job to help them to understand that. They are the ones who will exist for much of their lifetimes with whatever governing system emerges from our present turmoil. They have far more to lose than we do if it goes wrong. 🙁