“No man is an island,” wrote John Donne, a blind man who could see, and so today, we are Boston.

We reach across hundreds of miles and clasp hands: we, the broken yet headed for healing; the wounded yet being bound up; the out-of-the-garden with faces turned toward the heavenly city; the not-yet moment by moment transforming into the now. We acknowledge the heroes seen and unseen, watching through eyes blurred with tears and not-knowing as people offer homes and water and wheelchairs and a cowboy-hat-clad peace activist holds an artery in his hand even as our hearts behold the one who collects every tear. We are a nation with its beginnings in this city, a nation with a history of turning its wrongs into rights, built upon faith in one who makes the broken new. We press on in the midst of chaos because the deepest part of us, beyond words and explanation and evidence, knows that every fragment will be claimed and named and made whole.