Building Cathedrals
Jan. 20th, 2025 01:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swan_towerI've long thought that the closest thing we have to medieval cathedrals is NASA projects (and those of other scientific space agencies). People work on those in the full awareness that they themselves will often be long gone by the time their mission reaches its destination, returns its data. And yet they do it anyway, devoting themselves to a cause that stretches beyond the everyday horizon of today, tomorrow. Just as the cathedral builders of past ages patiently hewed stone, raised walls, framed roofs, knowing they would not live to hear the psalms sung within the sanctuary they built.
The cathedral of a better United States has been under construction since 1776. Its original blueprint was badly flawed. Sometimes its fabric has crumbled, and what was built had to be built again. Very likely, none of us here today will live to see its true completion.
We must keep building it anyway.
We may hope for a victory in two years, in four -- but a victory is not, will not be, the victory. We have to think in the longer term. The Republican Party didn't get to where it is now overnight; it's the fruit of decades spent working toward their goals, at every level from school boards and city councils on up. Pushing that back, making a truly progressive society, will be the work of more decades.
So we must celebrate the victories as they come, even when they are small. We may say "there is still more work to be done," because it will be true, but that must not become a mantra of discouragement. We are building a cathedral, one stone at a time. We may not live to see it completed, but the work itself is still worth doing.
The cathedral of a better United States has been under construction since 1776. Its original blueprint was badly flawed. Sometimes its fabric has crumbled, and what was built had to be built again. Very likely, none of us here today will live to see its true completion.
We must keep building it anyway.
We may hope for a victory in two years, in four -- but a victory is not, will not be, the victory. We have to think in the longer term. The Republican Party didn't get to where it is now overnight; it's the fruit of decades spent working toward their goals, at every level from school boards and city councils on up. Pushing that back, making a truly progressive society, will be the work of more decades.
So we must celebrate the victories as they come, even when they are small. We may say "there is still more work to be done," because it will be true, but that must not become a mantra of discouragement. We are building a cathedral, one stone at a time. We may not live to see it completed, but the work itself is still worth doing.
