Hands Across the Water

Long before I unlocked the door at my first Des Moines address, the city has taken pride in its reputation as the "city of bridges." Embraced by the confluence of two rivers, there are need for such structures. Otherwise, whole sections of town would be cut off from one another. Geographically estranged. Fortunately, our forebears acted for community and built bridges. They built functional ones, but with an eye for aesthetics. The result was a series of spans, both performative and lovely.

But, alas, entropy comes to all things, even bridges. Or, as WB Years once bluntly, but poetically put it, "things fall apart." The center is always at the mercy of the opposite sides and their willingness to reach across.

Which is always the question: what about the other side?

Bridges, by their very definition, seek to connect two disparate banks, chasmically divided. If one could simply and deftly step across, a bridge would be unnecessary.

But as it goes, from time to time, I find myself here when I need to be there; or seeing you there, I long to be together. And so we build a bridge.

In truth it may be that we more loathe than long for our togetherness. We have become fond of asserting that "all are welcome" and that "all means all," but that's seldom a bar we manage to reach. There is always someone I prefer to exclude - always someone whose ideology I refute, whose politics I despise, whose rhetoric I condemn. There is always someone I prefer to leave stranded on the farthest shore.

Then something - conscience, maybe, or common cause or our respective resources - beckons our bridging in service to greater good. We don't have to marry each other or hunt for some snipe of affection. Perhaps the most we can do is hold our respective noses, shake perfunctory hands, accomplish our shared work, and safely retreat to our more comfortable and familiar shores.

A wise teacher once counseled that there are no permanent enemies and no permanent friends. The organizing principle in a given moment is the need at hand.

And so we build a bridge. We build as many as we need. If a municipality can be a "city of bridges," surely a people can be as well. Because the gulf should not have the final word.