In these strange-lit hours of power’s transition, we find ourselves inhabitants of the same city but readers of different maps.

The stone-truth stands before us: celebration and desolation walk the same streets, drink from the same wells, breathe the same air…

What curious architecture, this shared space of contrary emotions. Like old church bells that toll for both weddings and funerals, our public squares now echo with intermingled songs of victory and lament.

Perhaps we are not meant to solve this riddle of divided hearts. What if this dissonance – this holy clash of joy and dread – is not a problem seeking resolution but a mirror showing us what we’ve forgotten about being human? The art of dwelling together in the presence of difference…

The modern mind, schooled in the surgery of separation, yearns to diagnose and cure this condition. But wisdom, that grey-haired mentor of ages, suggests otherwise. In the old town squares, in the ancient ways of breaking bread with strangers, there lived an understanding: that unity need not wear the same face, that peace is not found in sameness but in the grace of seeing clearly.

The question turns not on how to silence the ringing bells, but how to conduct this strange symphony of opposing melodies. How to remember, in our street-worn knowing, that triumph and trepidation often share the same address.

So perhaps we begin not with answers but with better questions:
– How might we honour both the opening and closing of political chapters?
– What forgotten wisdom sleeps in stone about living well with difference?
– Could our very discord be forging something we cannot yet name?

Here, in these shared corridors of our present moment, we are all apprentices to uncertainty. Learning, step by faltering step, how to be citizens in a world where celebration and mourning exchange glances across the breakfast table…

Learning how streets (and social media) might remain common ground that makes room for both the victory parade and the vigil.

David Tensen

PS. I’m not a US citizen. I didn’t vote. But my feeds arefull of celebration and mourning.
Some people are elated and relieved. Others, disappointed and afraid. To assume that millions of people on either side are delusional idiots is not in me. I find that kind of thinking terribly unhelpful. I think everybody decided what was best for them, and I can’t argue with that