Dear Folks,
I spent yesterday the way I imagine most of you did, moving from conversation to conversation, stitching together a variety of responses to the presidential election. Some of those talks were difficult, others were sublime, and the honesty was a privilege to be invited into. As one member of the Wednesday Bible study said, sharing our differing emotions in this way is “raw and real” and an essential practice for healing the chasm that exists between so many people in our country. As a nation, we woke up yesterday in an America more divided than many of us had heretofore realized.
The world is changing so fast, one said, and many Americans feel left behind or threatened, forgotten and forsaken. “How did I miss that,” she wondered. The boundaries of self or family or country seem infiltrated, icons of success have been challenged or replaced or lost. People of every race and class and gender have been marginalized at times in the past two years. Will the center hold?
Secretary Clinton said, “This loss hurts, but please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it…Our campaign was never about one person, or even one election. It was about the country we love and building an America that is hopeful, inclusive, and big-hearted… I still believe in America, and I always will… Donald Trump is going to be our president. (And) We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead… I count my blessings every single day that I am an American. I still believe, as deeply as I ever have, that if we stand together and work together with respect for our differences, strengthen our convictions, and love for this nation, our best days are still ahead of us.”
I am encouraged by president-elect Trump’s words in his victory speech. “For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, of which there were a few people, I’m reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so we can work together and unify our great country… Now it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division… Every single American will have the opportunity to realize his or her fullest potential. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer… All people and all other nations. We will seek common ground not hostility, partnership not conflict.” Mr. Trump revealed his capacity to be a statesman, and each of us must not only wish him well, but shoulder the work of our common goals.
President Obama reminded us that “we are not Republicans first, or Democrats first, but Americans first.” He acknowledged that the last 18 months have been difficult, perhaps damaging for us, but that partisan politics in the end is “an intramural skirmish. We are on the same team.” As another member of my Bible study remarked, “The work ahead is like darning the holes in my husband’s sweater. I start sewing slowly around the edges, stitch by stitch, and slowly the gap is filled in. The finished product isn’t always pretty, but the mended fabric holds.”
The community of faith, especially in our work to foster relationships between people of different faiths, has much to offer our nation at this moment. According to Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin, who spoke last night in our “Morality in a time of National Decision” series, we know that faith was built for tumultuous times. “We know how to mourn, how to lament and cry, and then how get back into the game,” said Cardin. And our call is “not only to pick up our spirits, but to help pick up the spirits of others.” We can model and promote unity, we have resilience, and we have hope. Remember Abraham Lincoln’s pleading, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” (First Inaugural)
God mends through broken hearts and our capable calloused hands.
Love, David