A friend of ours has devoted her lifetime to building, and then nurturing, an astonishing choral group in New York City. Their recent concert featured a poem about the nativity by Wendell Berry, who was also a novelist, essayist, farmer, and environmental activist, set to wondrous music. One passage brought the sharp, hot sensation of tears to my eyes:
“…we are here
As we have never been before,
Sighted as not before, our place
Holy, although we knew it not.”
We are still here, in the same place — not really knowing, not knowing enough how blessed we are to live in this wondrous world. A world of beauty, astonishment, grace, delight and surprise. We know not how holy. We do not — all of us, the multitude of us — cherish it enough.
It is for each of us to face birth and death, even of the godly, as we will. We have much to learn from one another. And it is for each of us to come into a recognition of all that is holy. Will we get there in time?
Will we join hearts, set moral compasses, put collective muscle into doing what is right soon enough to protect this gift of a world for our dear children, our grandchildren — and the chain of births ahead that we will never see, but we already love?
I have faith that we will. All of you nurture our sense of hope.
In the spirit of appreciating a dying year, and anticipating a new one full of life, love, and work, may all of us at Moms Clean Air Force wish you warmth and delight. And a sense of the holy.
With enormous thanks for all you have done to work by our sides, and for your company, as we open doors, “looking into another world that is this world.”