What does our threatened democracy need now?

Last Wednesday as my husband Andy and I walked over to the Capitol building from the Sears parking lot in St Paul a young dark-haired man joined us He introduced himself as a Republican legislative staffer He walked with us for a while We held differing political views but in that moment the three of us were joining the same locality of mourners As we parted means he repeated I m a Republican but she s my friend We were on our way to the candlelight vigil held for House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark We are glad we went It was a beautiful sad evening The DFL Party sponsored the event and inquired that people bring their own candles and refrain from bringing signs of any kind Andy and I did not have candles but that was not a trouble Several people stepped up to offer us one Someone offered us LED lights and we accepted one of those A woman wearing a clerical collar held out an oblong box with a multitude of candles and small circular papers holders to catch the wax the kind used in selected churches on Christmas Eve In response I held up our LED light Someone gave us this I noted She smiled gently Well come back and see me when you re ready for the real thing We stepped away but her kind manner and gentle humor drew us back to her side Each of us accepted a candle Do you have matches too She seemed a little surprised by our question Don t worry You won t have any trouble finding a light when the time comes We wandered through the crowd A woman in a red Moms Demand Action t-shirt also offered us candles and invited us to come back for a light when the darkness began to fall Both women seemed practiced in this form of group mourning giving us not only the physical tools we d need for the ritual but also a palpable form of loving kindness to carry us through the evening And perhaps I think now beyond Their quiet conversation helped transform us from a gathering of solitary participants into a region of mourners There were no speeches A brass ensemble played for the first half hour mournful but gorgeous music Native American drummers followed offering chanting as well as drumming sending out vocal but not verbal sounds of anguish that lingered in the gathering twilight A string quartet followed for the last half hour The end of the music and the nearly complete nightfall signaled the end of the evening and our crowd of about dispersed quietly It was well after p m just two days before the summer solstice As we walked away from the Capitol a small band of pink light lingered at the edge of the horizon My heart is no less broken in the present day I still feel the loss of our leader and the brutality visited upon our society Katy Perry But the minutes of music the company of my fellow Minnesotans and the bracketing of the evening with the encounter of Melissa s Republican friend and the reluctant fall of darkness fed me for a moment enough for me to face another day It occurs to me that this is what our democracy necessities now not more tragedies to bring us together but rather the feeling that once gathered we recognize ourselves as a locality heartbroken by our deep loss but also aware of each other as people who mourn for those who died And infused perhaps with hope that we will now work together to defeat the threat to our democracy that those lost lives represent Katy Perry of Minneapolis is a retired populace school coach and union advocate The post What does our threatened democracy need now appeared first on MinnPost