Monday, April 15, 2013

To Boylston St.

Bombs exploded today on a street I've walked up and down more times than I can remember. I had my heart broken on that street and I fell in love with my wife on that street. It is a street I've ignored, headphones in, on my way to more important things, and it is also a street that I've soaked in on Sunday afternoons. It is both local and touristy. It is friendly to business people and shoppers, parades and rush hour traffic alike. If the Commons and the Gardens are the lush pulmonary center of Boston, Boylston Street is her femoral artery.

And today, on a holiday so proudly local that it borders on pagan, Boylston Street was desecrated with violence. We won't know why the bombs were made and set where and when they were, probably for sometime and maybe not at all. We'll never know why an eight year old child had to die a violent death, because there can be no "why" for that. Those who have the liberty of paying attention will collect the stories of kindness and courage that always tumble from us in extremis. Others, not content with such crystalline shards of humanity will, in the heat of the moment, blow bulbs of speculation that cool into air-tight orbs, as smooth as they are fragile. We should, all of us, reach for those we love.

That impulse, to reach for those we love, cannot be impugned. The fear, the worry that it evinces has its roots sunk deep in the bonds of family and true friendship. But I have, beneath the fear for the safety and the well being of me and mine, a fear that is broader, quieter, and further reaching. I am afraid that we will lose our grip on civilization and on society. I am afraid that the bonds of social cooperation, those bonds that make streets like Boylston places of work and play, of banality and moment, will slip out of our grasp. Now, the loss that we acutely fear, that of our loved ones and especially to violence, bursts into our lives. But the loss of trust and human dignity that accompanies the withering of civilizations, that creeps across our generations. We mark its achievements with dates and battles in the books of history, but its process is deliberate and as subtle as it is relentless. It is this sludge of civil discord that keeps me awake in my bed, much more than the astringent of random violence. This is my abiding fear.

And yet. And yet this deeper fear calls out for a deeper love. It is a love we saw, through smoke and screams, in those who ran towards the blast and not away from it. But in the clear air, it is a love that returns good for evil. It is a love that always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. It does not just protect its own, nor trust its own. It is a love that hopes when things are catastrophic, that hopes even when eight year olds aren't safe. And it is a love that perseveres, not only when the work is hard and the odds are steep, but also at the hour of death, when it knows that the days labors are done. Such a love knows that its love is not enough, and loves still.

Love still, friends. Love still.