Joy Cometh in the Morning
Dear Friends,
Martin Luther King, Jr. was fond of a Bible verse that Kamala Harris used in a recent speech:
Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Psalm 30:5
When does that morning ever come? Because, whatever the results of the election next Tuesday (when we are also meeting online at 11am as usual!), there will be continued and probably increased trouble. Darkness, not dawn. Forces of delusion and disorder are rampant in the land, and not in this land alone.
In some ways, things look and will look worse than ever before. The US has never been this close to a pure fascist takeover, and those impulses will persist. We're already not preventing various forms of state-sanctioned murder and environmental crime.
Recall, though, that there has always been trouble. "Ye have the poor with you always" (Mark 14:7), and "In the world ye shall have tribulation" (John 16:33). This state of affairs was always present. We cannot accept it. We cannot (altogether) fix it.
The joyful morning in question -- Joy cometh in the morning -- is not a time of day or a series of agreeable outcomes. Rather, it is the dawn in our hearts and limbs, our reborn determination to contribute to the light of the world in all the ways that we can.
Today at 11 we will invoke that inner rising, and with it the sense of accompaniment that happens at daybreak, when the sun and the breeze and the birds and the whole visible world return again to encourage our first steps into the day.
wishing you joy,
Michael
