Point of View: Please Don’t

This time of day, when the sun can be seen in stripes on the dark grass and on the ferns and there’s a breeze and some of the birds can be heard, is my favorite. Maybe O’en’s too. 

He’s lying on the deck looking out, for movement, any movement, Dave, deer, joggers, though he just lay back, flat out, with a sigh. I say, “O’en,” but he doesn’t respond, happy in the moment, which is all he knows, and which is all we should know. Then our minds would really be open. But, alas, they are filled, nay, stuffed with things, a lot of which we’d probably be better off without.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could clean them out like closets every now and then. But the prejudices and fears — as well, yes, as the fond glimpses — remain, so, when it comes to the bad stuff you have no choice but to acknowledge it, and, if you want to be a human being, which I once confessed was my ambition in life, face it down.

How then can anyone say, as the present Supreme Court justice nominee has, that they have an open mind. 

“What are your prejudices, sir, what are your fears, and can you tell us how you’ve successfully dealt with them in rendering objective judicial decisions?”

You will follow the original intent of the founding fathers? But those fine, stirring words were written in slave-holding days, in days when many women and many children too were chattel, when, aside from the elite, rights were out of reach. People had to fight for them, it was messy, not so neat, not so strictly constructionist.

And so we have evolved — yes, the Constitution is a living document, I’m happy to say. And only when it has been treated as such have we become more human. 

We have been inching toward polity, though it’s been a slog. 

Please don’t set us back.