The Heart and Courage of the Resistance

Those of us who have lived long enough have known suffering. My own journey has been to seek some learning or growth through that suffering. I have been able to do that some of the time and not so much other times. I do know though to be awake to the pain brings meaning and action; that action is most often a baby step. To some it may mean nothing — to me that baby step means the world.

I found the following story long ago which has helped me know whatever tiny action we take for good is never lost. I have reread this often during the terrible days of this Trump administration. I reread it this morning, January 1, 2018, to help me ready for the coming year as we in the resistance oppose the cruelty and dishonesty of Trump’s policies. Together we are “building a bridge” for decency, fairness and justice for all.

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“To what do I go to this far land which no one has ever reached? Oh, I am alone! I am utterly alone!” the woman cried.

And Reason, that old man, said to her, “Silence! What do you hear?”

And she listened intently, and said, “I hear a sound of feet, a thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, and they beat this way!”

He said, “They are the feet of those that shall follow you. Lead on! Make a track to the water’s edge! Where you stand now, the ground will be beaten flat by ten thousand times ten thousand feet.” And he said, “Have you seen the locusts how they cross a stream? First, one comes down to the water-edge, and it is swept away, and then another comes and then another, and then another, and at last with their bodies piled up a bridge is built and the rest pass over.”

She said, “And, of those that come first, some are swept away and are heard of no more; their bodies do not even build the bridge?”

“They are swept away, and are heard of no more-and what of that?” he said.

“And what of that — ,” she said.

“They make a track to the water’s edge,” he replied.

“Yes, they make a track to the water’s edge.” She paused and said, “Over that bridge which shall be built with our bodies, who will pass?”

He said, “The entire human race.”

And the woman grasped her staff.

And I saw her turn down that dark path to the river.

I am grateful we are building this bridge together. Happy New Year.