The Rant now believes goodness flows from the heart like jazz. You improvise with the person or situation in front of you and create a tune of righteousness. Some days you find the groove and some days you just play the familiar refrain that gets you to the chorus.

The Rant once believed goodness emerged as rigid and regular as a stamped part from a factory. You flipped the switch and the moral process always produced the same result.

The Rant now believes evil takes a village. An endless hammering by a community upon a beautiful soul until it becomes misshapen and broken and functions as an outcome of those blows.

The Rant once believed evil flowed from within, constructed in a void that never heard any voice around it.

At the end of every year we attempt to ritualize what we believe in the hope the world will become a reflection of that belief. But the world always becomes something more beautiful and more awful than our beliefs. Perhaps we should believe in the world’s ability to surprise and amaze us instead of trying to warp and constrict its wonder into the palm of our hand.

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