I don't accept that we are against each other and unable to find common ground. I reject the assertion that we are hopelessly polarized and divided. I don’t agree to see us as on opposite teams with opposite viewpoints and concerns. I will not concede that some people don’t care about basic human needs, their own or others'. We all need food and home and belonging and love. We all want a stable economy filled with opportunity. Nobody want dirty air or water, or to pass on an uninhabitable earth to the next generation. We all want to be safe, to live in safe neighborhoods and a safe country. We all want to be seen and heard, and to know our lives are valuable and our contributions matter. We all want to trust we will be well cared for when we’re sick or injured, and we want to know our futures are secure. All of us want and believe in justice and liberty for all. Working for these things is not undermining them; being passionate about some of these things does not mean rejecting others. I do not accept that this is so. I will seek common ground, and join in a shared reality that uphold the needs and lives of all.
I don’t accept the urgency and intensity. I refuse to greet each day with anxiety and hand-wringing about the future, predictions of doom and insistence on vigilance. Instead I will welcome each day as an opportunity to live into our fundamental belonging to each other. I will watch for ways to affirm our intrinsic connection, to notice our shared humanity, and to join in strengthening the patriotic cooperation and mutual respect of this nation that together we are.
I don’t accept that we are in “battle between good and evil.” I refuse to surrender to exaggeration and hyperbole. I decline any invitation and rebuff any insistence to depict other human beings as caricatures, or distortions of their humanity, in order to label them more effectively, so I can dismiss them guiltlessly, or acquiesce to them thoughtlessly. Instead I will remind myself that we all are a mess of contradictions: selfishness and beauty, love and obliviousness, trying and failing. I will not let this election take away the exquisite complexity of each human being with whom I share this country.
I don’t accept that cooperation is impossible, or that to meet my needs I must deny yours, or to meet your needs you must deny mine. We need each other. I don’t accept that I am better off without you.
I don’t accept that some voices should be silenced, even if those voices grieve me. Instead, I pray that the voices that sadden or frighten me might stir me to compassion and curiosity about the person behind the rhetoric, the humanity that is just like my own, armored and defending a frightened and tender heart that longs to love and be loved.
Right now our brokenness is on full display. But I do not accept that this state of being is permanent or dire. Instead I welcome it as a sign of breaking open, the possibility of our soul healing differently, stronger. I will not be afraid of the pain. I will not be afraid of the struggle. I know the joy that is found in shared suffering, and the peace that comes in coming alongside. I have seen how new life comes from death. I have seen how the loss of what we thought we were can lead to what we can be. I have learned that being human means we are always in process, never complete. Each of us is always learning, always growing, always invited (and sometimes forced) to begin again and dream anew. Why would our collective of human beings called the United States of America be any different?
So, no matter who ends up being our president for the next four years, I do not accept fear as the winner of our nation. I will be led by love and guided by hope.
America is us; it’s you and it’s me. This I embrace.
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