Time to Mourn, Time to Dance

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: a day to celebrate and give thanks for the life and ministry of a great American. Twelve years ago on this day, I was aboard Amtrak, heading from Boston to Washington, D.C. As the train rattled down the Northeast Corridor, the soon-to-be President and Vice President of the United States, along with their families and a great swell of young and old Americans were engaged in a day of service in the nation’s capital, honoring the legacy of Dr.King. The following day, we stood in the bitter cold with a Black mother who, tears streaming down her cheeks, told her young daughter, “Your grandmother is smiling in heaven.” We held hands with a lesbian couple and a Boston College-educated attorney from the deep south: all of us listening to Aretha Franklin sing the National Anthem and cheering after the first African-American president took the oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Watching the parade afterwards, we shared a wall with an Indigenous family and finally, eating lunch, we sat at a table with a Cuban-American woman. Altogether, we were a microcosm of that day’s promise for America.

On the same day, eight years later, it was an entirely different scenario. I went for a long walk alone near home, in order to get far from the spectacle on radio and television.

Now, we are on the cusp of another such day. The streets of Washington are empty. Razor wire and seven-foot high fences dominate the landscape while heavily armed National Guard personnel camp out on the floor of the Capitol building and law officers patrol the streets. It looks like a war zone. Actually, it is a war zone. Instead, today should, once again, be a time of remembrance and service in honor of Dr. King. It is not. It is a day of mourning; for all we have lost, for his dream now tattered and soiled, for the hundred of thousands killed by a deadly virus and under the knee of white supremacists.

How can I reconcile such grief with hope for a better time? What do I do with the tumble of conflicting emotions running rampant through my spirit?  Is this a beginning or an ending?   Is it a time to weep or a time to laugh? a time to mourn or a time to dance? a time to break down or a time to build up?

In the ancient Middle East, a wise person, known sometimes as Ecclesiastes, or as The Teacher or Preacher, spoke those words; although not as questions but as statements. “For everything there is a season,” the teacher said, “a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.” This is where we are now; in a season for both. Time to sob and to jump for joy; time to feel the pain of the world while we are dancing. As contradictory as it sounds, perhaps that’s our only way through to get to the beyond.

And so, what is that “beyond”? One thing is for certain. It will not be January 21 (even though 1/21/21 seems an auspicious number as it can be read backward and forward: 12121). Or even the first 100 days, although I yearn to believe something like this: “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York;”( or, with apologies to Shakespeare “son of Scranton,” only three hours northeast of York, PA!) The comparison ends there, since we learn that particular sun/son of York (Richard III) didn’t end up so sunny after all, while Joe Biden is cut from entirely different cloth. Nonetheless, the Biden-Harris tenure will not be all sunshine and flowers, despite our longing for it.

At some point in my schooling, I remember a professor quoting a literary critic who opined that all Western European literature stems from the Bible and Shakespeare. If that is true (although I would add also Homer) then the two pieces I have quoted above are partly responsible for the first lines of this classic English novel:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…*

It seems this is where we are. The challenge before us is to live in the tension of these opposites, not just simply to survive it, but to muddle our way through, expecting setbacks and celebrating victories, expressing hope and living our values, finding common ground with differently-minded folks and supporting everyone who stands and works for justice and equality. If we can do these things, maybe we can celebrate Dr. King today after all, since he was the pillar of fire that got us this far.

*from Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities