A friend emailed me on Friday, only filling in the subject line: Happy Eve of Bernie Birthday. He was referring not to me but to the fact that Saturday would have been Bernie’s 86^th birthday, so Friday was its eve.

Today, Sunday, is also an eve. The eve of Martin Luther King Day, and the eve of the inauguration of Donald Trump.

“What? Trump’s inauguration is being held on Martin Luther King Day?” I was indignant when I first heard it. For a moment I wondered if this was a Republican plot. He’ll probably refer to King in his inaugural speech, I thought angrily, he’ll claim his mantle just as he claimed Lincoln’s. And Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, already mandated that flags be raised on that day even though they’re supposed to be at half-mast for 30 days after Jimmy Carter’s death.

That mini-outrage went out the window as quickly as it arrived, leaving in its wake just this puzzle of two celebrations, King and Trump, taking place on the same day. A cosmic joke?

The poet Galway Kinnell wrote:

On the mountain tonight the full moon

faces the full sun. Now could be the moment

when we fall apart or we become whole.

We labor and trudge through life, mostly staying within a safe, comfortable perimeter, doing the expected and the accepted, living out the effects of decisions made long ago and harboring a vague sense of karma, of multiple currents and family histories that show up in how we meet moment after moment.

And still, there are nights when the full moon faces the full sun. It’s not something to be seen but rather sensed, and it’s nothing as simplistic as labeling one leader a moon and one leader a sun. Rather, it’s about that night, or the moment when we fall apart or become whole.

Years ago, I read Bearing the Cross, David Garrow’s biography of Martin Luther King, and then read whatever else I could find about him. I want to give myself the space and time tomorrow, a national holiday, to appreciate not just the man but also those times, the amazing, improbable Sixties. What we felt, what we wished for, where we placed our faith.

Sometimes I think that this may be the age of science fiction, where exponential strides in technology beggar changes in the heart, but I’m not sure that’s true. I have deep faith in the ability of this heart-mind to constantly expand, constantly integrate and absorb. To shed the illusion of a false self and become conscious of its true nature, which is a universal heart, a universal mind.

Even as I harbor alarm, I trust everything that comes up, including the inauguration of Donald Trump. I don’t belittle the effects of murder, rape, disease or starvation, deportations and the break-up of families, the losses of homes due to fires and the losses of people we loved. In fact, they’re very important to me because they hold my feet to the fire, they make me honest: How does it feel now? And now? And now?

And yet, I sense that things bigger than our imagination are happening through us. My grief upon seeing Peter Cunningham’s photo of our family standing at the crematorium while Bernie’s body burned, concerns about immigrant families living so close to me, the devastation in Gaza and the trauma in Israel, children’s lives cut short, multi-layered cynicism in some places and naked brutality in others—all are part of a creative force at work.

Some of us are closer to the end of our lives than others, but this world doesn’t end. Self-realization, where the world is the Self, is endless, and tomorrow is no exception. So, I will light incense for King , recalling the Friday of his murder when, in response to rumors and word of mouth, thousands of us gathered in Central Park to mourn him. For some, it felt like the end of the world that day. It wasn’t.

The world hasn’t gotten messier since, it was always messy, only now I’m more aware of it. Many of us have developed so much more awareness since that day. We may not have found our bliss, as Joseph Campbell suggested, but some of us were lucky to find some roles to play, regardless of how small. And all of us, all, have something great at stake. How do we show up?

On the mountain tonight the full moon

faces the full sun. Now could be the moment

when we fall apart or we become whole.

My bet is that we become whole, because we already are.

It’s snowing now. It had all melted just 12 hours ago, and now we’ve getting snow that, I’m told, will fall in the range of three to eight inches. They call it here a plowable snow, meaning snow tall enough to require plowing. That seems to me an example of getting ahead of myself, talking of clean-up before the phenomenon has even arrived.

I filled the birdfeeders and sprinkled seeds on tree stumps for the squirrels. Tonight we’ll sleep while the snow falls, giving us miraculous white nights we didn’t earn.