Something There Is...

My Aunt Anna was a dues-paying member of the John Birch Society. Another aunt and an uncle were members, too, but Aunt Anna talked to me more often about the Birch Society beliefs than the others did. I heard her say once that she was afraid that liberals were creeping into the Society. I sent her a UNICEF card for Christmas one year. I think she was rather pleased to get a card from me, but she hastened to tell me, “We don’t believe in the United Nations, you know.” She saw the union of nations as a sign of the end times, as something engineered by the forces of the anti-Christ.

Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall,” suggests that the forces of nature work against dividing walls—winter frost heaving up the ground to make the stones fall away from one anther. He’d rather

have the walls down and live in harmony, while his neighbor was sure that “good fences make good neighbors.” Aunt Anna would have agreed with the neighbor.

My first and last post to “Bridge People” was made on August 17. Of 2013, I hasten to add. Before and since, I’ve thought of many people, famous and less well known, who have lived, who now live, as bridges in a world divided by so many mean chasms. But I couldn’t get myself to write about them. Maybe continuing to maintain two blogs is more than I can handle along with all my other projects. And maybe, Robert Frost to the contrary, there is something in nature or something in the energy of the world that

does not love a bridge. Maybe my inertia has been fostered by an energy striving to preserve divisions, to keep the chasms unbridgeable. Politicians and pundits slice up the United States into red and blue. Partisans look at a proposed bill not to see how it might benefit us but to ascertain which side of the divide it comes from. In 1948, Mohandas Ghandi was killed by a fellow Hindu because he was committed to bridging the gap between Muslims and Hindus.

Despite the powers that try to keep us separated from one another, from seeing what we share in common, I read stories every day about people who are spanning the differences, reaching out to others instead of building walls. It is these stories I want to tell. The inertia may simply be my own lack of discipline. I say this because I don’t want to sound paranoid or flaky, as if what I might post here is so important that the forces of darkness oppose me. Nevertheless, there is plenty of evidence that, with apologies to Mr. Frost, “Something there is that doesn’t love” a bridge.