What Can We Ask of 2021?

 What can we ask of 2021? 

After having suffered calamitous loss in 2020, not just of life itself, but of those threads of existence that tie us to each other and give us our emotional ballast, after watching our President wallow in self absorbed mutiny against reason and compassion, after waiting for the nightmare to somehow wear itself out, the best we could manage was to survive, our spirit shaken, our ability to defend against countless blows, physical and psychological, tested to the limit of our collective being.

And so we enter a new year rushing into its arms. We are soon to be unburdened from the shackles of Mr. Trump. And the scent of possibility lies tantalizingly close as a vaccine rollout lurches forward in halting, uneven strides. We are more then ready for the healing to begin. It is not a matter of demand but of aching need.

So we ask that the new year treat us with a kindness nowhere  evident this past tortuous turn. That it not be filled with disappointed expectation, that it not be home to any further cruelties. That it look upon us not as wounded animals ready for the slaughter but as it would its own children. 

We ask of 2021 that it allow the sun to shine once more, the rivers to flow, the birds to sing. We ask that we be permitted to smile, permitted to dream, permitted to hope. We ask this not by way of compensation for the ills that have descended upon us, but as a demonstration that our universe is, in the final analysis, a benevolent one. We ask for tender mercies for that is fully the air we must have to breathe. 

We will try to be patient, for we recognize that this disease of body and soul needs time to dissipate. If you promise us a better tomorrow, we will abide what transpires until then. We are not greedy but we are desperate.

We know we ask much of 2021. But we have been through so much to get here.