bonding

When something breaks, there needs to be glue. Our hearts are broken, and America is broken in half, and our friends who voted for the other party may not even know that they're broken because they don't feel a part of our whole.

We are the glue that brings us back together.

As I walked my daughter and her best friend through the warm rain to preschool this morning, I thought: "Maybe this happened because the they simply can't be the glue. Right now, they literally can't go high."

They can't see beyond their own justified despair at what has happened in rural and suburban America. They are suffering and sick and underemployed and living in little ghost towns. They're scared. And they have been led down a path by profit-driven media that stokes the fires of hate and rage and fear. At this point, they only have one another, and don't have the rich, colorful fabric of communities like ours. And today they feel strong, standing tall on the broken foundations of our Democracy, only seeing what divides us, as the other half weeps.

Let them feel strong today, and let us take this day to heal our broken hearts with our glue, together, as we can.

And tomorrow, let us get up and be the glue that America needs. If we would have come out victorious, the rift would only grow and the intensity of hate would have scorched us all. It's the gift of our love that will both allow them to have their voices heard, and allow us to step in the role of glue, so we can all heal together.

I don't know what it means, but I know that I want to understand how we can heal as a nation. Maybe we need to become modern day Freedom Riders. Buses full of pantsuits and men and women of color and children from our cities and suburbs, and we go out to our neighbors in the ruby red strongholds and hug them. Pray with them. Play on the same playgrounds as their children. Share our food with them. Our languages. Show them that we are broken, too, and, yet, we hear them. And we want to heal together.

Love must trump hate. I don't think they are ready to be the glue, so we must. It's a much harder job than being the one with the hammer.

We must do something to tie us together with bonds so tight that a rupture of this size, in this, the land of dreams, never, ever happens again.