I was talking to an MIT senior the other day about her application for a scholarship. In it, she said that life doesn’t have a prescribed arc. Agreeing that this was true, I pointed out that an individual life tends to move in spirals, that the things that were minor interests might a decade or two later become an obsession (a larger loop), and obsessions from one age might become minor background noise many years later (a smaller loop). But we are likely to continue to care about the same or at least similar subjects throughout our lives.

For example, I have always been more or less religious. I came “this” close to becoming a Roman Catholic nun thirty-some years ago. With friends, I co-founded Middlebury College’s Interfaith Council. After I left the Roman Church and became Episcopalian, I got a Master of Arts in Christian theology. This all happened across twenty-five years.

I have always been a martial artist. I started out in high school doing Aikido, went to college and did Japanese karate. Thirty years later, I practice Chinese kung fu. Although years of therapy have taught me that not all interactions are inherently competitive or combative, I still tend to face the world prepared to do battle. So sue me.

I am a poet, have been since high school. I’ve published in professional journals, was nominated once for the Pushcart Prize, and have taught in university night school. I write (sorta! sometimes!) this blog. I see the world in pictures and turns of phrase.

I have in other places described these patterns as being my watermark: the Battling Bard of Boston, who wrestles with God and man. Yeah, it’s a little over the top, but it works for me.

The point is that these pieces of my identity are always going to be the first I will draw on when I am faced with troubling times.

And, let’s face it, children: these are troubling times indeed.

When tiki torches are not being used to lend a quiet glow to gatherings of families and friends, but to lend the element of fire to make an American Nazi rally more terrifying, we’re doing something wrong.

When a disturbed young man drives an SUV into a crowd at a peaceful protest that he disagrees with, killing a woman, and state legislatures contemplate legislation that will legalize “accidental” death when a car hits people in a road, we’re doing something wrong.

When we see two Category 5 hurricanes in two weeks–with more on the way–and dozens of our legislators, who ought to have the education to know better, still deny the existence and increasing power of climate change, we’re doing something wrong.

So yes, I am deeply troubled, but I am done being troubled and silent about it. I don’t want to spread pain around. That never goes well. But I do want to question power structures that support unegalitarian regimes of social interaction:

• Confederate statues that lionize the losers of an attack on US unity, for the purpose of making people of color feel attacked;
• gerrymandering that prioritizes white communities over communities of color in voting–just as they are in environmental and educational justice;
• and the lag in money for infrastructure in communities of color, compared with affluent white communities.

And don’t even get me started on the whole GOP attack on Obamacare. God knows that American healthcare, while having the potential to be the best in the world, lags sorely in people’s ability to access and pay for it.

Troubling times, in a country whose founding principles call us to do much, much better.

In 1775, Patrick Henry encouraged the convention in Virginia to allow him to organize a company of volunteer cavalry in every county in Virginia to protect themselves from the attack that he saw soon to come from the British. He said:

“The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country….  Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it….

“Sir, we have done everything that could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne….

Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace, but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

I am not quite ready to say the same thing, and I hope I never have to. But at times like these, we need to remember that the people of this country have endured times like these before, and like them, we will overcome them if we, like they, stand up.

Source: Wirt, William. Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry . (Philadelphia) 1836, as reproduced in The World’s Great Speeches, Lewis Copeland and Lawrence W. Lamm, eds., (New York) 1973.