Rilke was right to note that the new year would be full of things that have never been. Every new year brings us innovation, discovery and change. In that, every new year brings us something to hope for despite looming dangers. Despite the many losses that have made 2016 a bitter and sorrowful year, I fear we may look back on it with longing as the Grand Panjandrum takes the oath he will break that very day and every day that follows.
Tomorrow will follow tomorrow and time goes forward inexorably. All we can do, then, as we teeter on the edge of the abyss, is resist despair, resist defeat and find sanctuary in community, in beauty, and in certain knowledge that the arc of the moral universe may have gotten a kink in it, but it still bends toward justice.
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