Two hundred and fifty years ago this weekend, a country spoke itself into being and reached, among its founding words, toward “a more perfect union.”
And today, in that same country’s capital, hundreds of masked men from a white nationalist group rode the Metro and marched on the 250th — faces covered, carrying Confederate flags among the American ones, some flown upside down, chanting “reclaim America.”
The images that will not leave me are from inside the train cars: a Black woman, seated; a Black man, standing; going about their morning, suddenly enclosed by men chanting to declare this country was never meant to include them. I am sickened. I don’t want to write past it, or beneath it, or dress it in gentler language. I want to begin here, because this is where we are.
And here is a grief that surprised me, sitting just beneath the sickness. Not only for the ones those men came to frighten — them first, and most. But for the young men themselves: so radicalized that they have come to believe this makes them strong, important, one of the included — when all of it shows the opposite.
A covered face is not courage. A mob is not belonging. To menace is not strength; it is smallness, and fear that has all but consumed them. I will not pretend it is harmless; it is not. And I will not hate them either, because to hate them back is the surest way to become them. Grief is the truer response — grief for how many have been so hollowed by fear that they mistook it for strength.
I’ve never quite trusted that word, “perfect.” It asks for something seamless and finished, and that has never once been the truth of us. What is true is that we are seeing the seams now. The cracks. The places that were never healed in the first place — only papered over and called whole.
It hurts. And it is supposed to hurt; the parts that ache are the parts that were wounded long ago and never tended. We are grieving what we thought this nation was, what we thought our communities were. That grief is not a sign that we’ve failed. It is a sign that something real is breaking open.
You know by now what I believe about breaking. You don’t put it back the way it was. What shatters can be set into something new — pieces that each once belonged somewhere else, becoming, together, truer than the whole they were cut from. The cracks don’t vanish; they become part of the picture.
A country can be re-formed this way too — not restored to some imagined unbroken past, but re-membered into something truer than the version that hid its own fractures. Not more perfect. More whole. More integrated. Wide enough, at last, that everyone actually belongs.
But here is the whole of it, the part I cannot say softly enough or often enough: we have to hold the resonance of love as we do it. Not the love that asks the wounded to stay quiet, or the harmed to be patient — that isn’t love, it’s only another kind of silencing.
I mean love as the fiercest thing we have: the one force that keeps this from collapsing into a tug-of-war over who gets to belong. Because without it, that is all it becomes — competing visions of who counts, each shoving until one prevails, and the winner draws the line. Love is what refuses that contest. It widens the circle instead of seizing it. Answer isolation with more isolation, contempt with contempt, and we will have only broken it again, and called it repair.
The pieces in our hands are sharp right now. We can clutch them and let them cut, and let ourselves be made bitter. Or we can begin, slowly, together, to set them into something that tells a truer story — one where the belonging is real because it finally includes the ones who were left out of the first telling.
This is the work of a life. It may also be the work of a country. The cracking makes room for the spring of living water, quenching the thirst of all that is.
What in this shared life of ours is asking to be re-formed rather than restored? You don’t have to answer today. Only let the question keep you company — and let love be the hand that holds the pieces.
Elizabeth Lightfoot Jameson is a spiritual teacher, contemplative guide, and ordained Episcopal priest based in Estes Park. Her writing, Broken Open, is at elizabethjameson.substack.com.
The Remembering Way
This week, my writing gains a companion: a podcast called The Remembering Way. It isn’t new — it’s the oldest thing: a returning to what has always been true beneath the noise, and the practice of coming home, to ourselves, to one another, and to the earth. In a time when so much feels like it is breaking, it is an invitation to wonder whether we were ever really alone — and to remember that what shatters can be re-formed into something truer than before.
It is free, and it is hybrid — however you come, online or in person, there is a place for you. The first episodes arrive Sunday, July 12, and we will gather that evening to send them into the world. Whether you long to be in the room or simply to listen from afar, you are warmly welcome.
When: Sunday, July 12, 2026 — doors 4:44 pm; the heart of the gathering 5:30–7:00 pm; linger after
Where: In person in Estes Park (address shared with RSVP) and online via Zoom
Cost: Free
RSVP: https://becoming-love.circle.so/c/events-d39d8c/second-sundays-the-wisdom-way-dc5a36-536dde-6a6c60
The podcast: Subscribe free to Broken Open on Substack — elizabethjameson.substack.com
Contact: elizabeth@ebjameson.com · 847-477-2850 ebjameson.com
Elizabeth, What beautiful words!!! Love is certainly all important and “we the people” must come back together and love each other for all our good. We need to step up, watch over and love each other, or the cracks can grow larger and could swallow us up.
Thank YOU!
Pious, pedantic judgments serve no constructive purpose. Elizabeth, what role did the K-12 education system play in developing those masked men’s world view and core values? I would be glad to write a thousand words on that reality check, but I know what the EVV would do with it? Equal share of voice? Not here in Estes Park, that is for sure.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I may be misreading you — if so, forgive me. What I’m advocating isn’t a verdict on any one institution, but something wider: that all of us, and every system that formed us, need a more intentional, more loving re-formation.
And I’ll gently push back on one word — pious. What I’m after is the opposite. It’s real, grounded, and fierce: looking beneath the surface at what we’re actually standing on, and refusing to call whole what was only papered over. The love I mean is the least sentimental thing I know.
Thank you so much — your words mean a great deal. Yes: the tending is everything. When we watch over one another, even the cracks can become places the light gets in rather than places we fall through. Grateful to be walking it alongside you.