Last night, while the Democrats were being pummeled, I went to hear Terry Tempest Williams speak. She talked about studying the art of mosaics in Italy, about the complicated communication skills of prairie dogs and of how ruthlessly they’ve been slaughtered, about the burying of the bones of genocide victims in Rwanda and making a memorial for those victims, about the death of her brother. She wove these disparate elements together, discussing both their sadness and beauty.

She spoke with a riveting, straightforward eloquence. Much of the time she was half choked up, though still speaking fluently, and we in the audience were also choked up. She said things we were all silently vowing to remember. “Whatever violence any human being can do, I could also do.” (a paraphrase) “Beauty is not an option, but a strategy for survival.” She encouraged us to have empathy for the lowliest of creatures. She made us feel connected to things larger than whatever we are when we’re alone. It was an experience of renewal, like being in church, but so much better.

In the question and answer period a woman asked what she could tell her husband, who is cynical and depressed about the state of the world. Terry Tempest Williams thought for a while. After some silence, she said, “Thank him.” A cryptic response. But then she explained. It’s a natural response, she said, to a bad situation. Who would urge a widow not to grieve for her dead husband? You hope to reach the other side of grief, but you must pass through it. It is healthy and natural, and it informs where you go and what you do next.

It has seemed odd to me—and yes, this is a huge generalization—that Democrats get sad and depressed about the state of the world while Republicans respond to their setbacks with anger and action. And the Democratic response has always seemed somewhat deplorable. But since last night I have a new view. It is a broken world and it is important to see the multitude of ways it is broken, the genocides of people and prairie dogs alike. Bearing witness to these things, naming them, becomes a pathway to then beginning to see the beauty that can be found in brokenness, the beauty that comes from putting broken things together, like a mosaic, in new ways. And we need the beauty; the beauty saves us. “Beauty is not an option, but a strategy for survival.”

I am only capturing a small fragment of what she said last night, but I wanted to make sure to get it down now, because I was awed, moved, and I will certainly read her new book, Finding Beauty in a Broken World.

Thank you, Terry.