Reflections with the air still thick with outrage, disbelief, and fear.
She’s Not Awake
As I write this, I’m dreading the conversation I’m about to have with my four year old daughter.
Oregon has vote-by-mail, so my partner and I filled out our ballots around our kitchen table. We talked with our eldest daughter about who we were voting for and why. She wanted to vote too, so she filled out a green construction paper with ovals and colored them in, like our ballots were. And then she wrapped it in an envelope and signed her name to the back. We walked as a family to the ballot drop-off site, and I got some pictures of our girls helping us vote for the first female presidential candidate. We came home and read together a book about superhero girls that night.
Today, I dread sharing the news with her. News that there’s still a barrier in America, a threshold that women are still denied to cross, and that for the next four years, she will see far less in common with the person holding the most visible role in the country and world than our family had hoped.
Today I dread the conversations friends have with their children. One friend shared that an Indian American family nearby woke to the news and their kid asked if it was safe to go to school today. What would be a juvenile question yesterday, easily dismissed, is a profoundly disconcerting one today that is not easily answered.
The Call
As the air is still thick with outrage and lament from the 2016 Elections in America, I awoke this morning with a hymn on my heart.
In one of the hymnals used by The United Methodist Church, the hymn-writer and worship professor Dr. Ruth Duck, wrote “Out of the Depths” which begins with this:
Out of the depths, O God, we call to you.
Wounds of the past remain, affecting all we do.
Facing our lives, we need your love so much.
Here in this community, heal us by your touch.
2016 has been a year of “the depths” for me as I lament that my Church and now my Country have both become ensnarled in a death grip. The politics of polarization and the human tendency towards compartmentalization has done far better for conservative agendas than progressive ones. We’ve been able to insulate ourselves from dissonance, find our tribes and swim only with them–and in doing so, we enable the very dehumanizing forces that now reign in both my church and country.
The Church and World are wounded by this driving apart of people in the Church and World to opposite ends of countries and communion tables, if they even know the other side is at the table and not just a caricature.
The Response
The second verse of Duck’s hymn speaks even more to me:
Out of the depths of fear, O God, we speak.
Breaking the silences, the searing truth we seek.
Safe among friends, our grief and rage we share.
Here in this community, hold us in your care.
Progressives in the Church and World have these wounds of the world uniquely set against us.
Progressives must cross thresholds and engage in hard conversations to keep the Church and World from regressing or allowing beliefs that will not stand the test of time to endure one more round. We haven’t had enough sustained relationships with folks on the other side–and I speak as a hypocrite who left the Bible Belt for the Pacific Northwest and moved from being in the minority culture to the majority. The echo chambers of theology and the relative worth of minorities do not naturally break open–they take persistent prodding and relationships that half the country doesn’t even want us to have.
We failed. But now we know we failed and we can ramp up our work of peace and justice with open-eyed awareness that progress and multiculturalism doesn’t just happen–it takes sustained work, and no matter how many steps forward are taken, we can always fall back.
In response to the November elections, missionary photojournalist Rev. Paul Jeffrey, who travels the world and sees the effects of toxic majority cultures, wrote on Facebook:
When Donald Trump comes for the Muslims, I am a Muslim.
When he comes for women, I am a woman.
When he comes for the Mexicans, soy Mexicano.
When he comes for the Jews, I am Jewish.
When he comes for the Palestinians, I am Palestinian.
When he comes for the refugees, I am a refugee.
When he comes for the journalists, I am a journalist.
When he comes for the environment, I am the trees and volcanoes.
May we continue the hard work of solidarity as the scope of prophetic ministry has become clearer.
May we bind our wounds from grief and rage we share, hold fast to those on the margins who see a country set against them, turn a mirror from the culture to our Church and ask if this is who we truly want to be enabling, and wake up again tomorrow ready and emboldened to share the searing truth we seek.
She’s Awake
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“If your generation votes to build a wall, I just want you to know my generation will be strong enough to tear it down.” Gwen Petty, age 11.
She’s awake.
Better go and have a sad conversation over breakfast. A conversation about what it means to not get our way, about how no one should ever touch her body without her consent, not even our President, about how no one should hurt her preschool friends who have different colored skin, not even our President. Of how sad I am that role models for her life and early development will not be found in stories told about the highest office in the land.
A heavy morning ahead, and a heavy time of mourning for the country I thought I was helping to build for my daughter, but 2016 has shown it was not yet to be.
Thoughts?
You say,
“Progressives must cross thresholds and engage in hard conversations to keep the Church and World from regressing or allowing beliefs that will not stand the test of time to endure one more round. We haven’t had enough sustained relationships with folks on the other side–and I speak as a hypocrite who left the Bible Belt for the Pacific Northwest and moved from being in the minority culture to the majority.”
I guess living in Atlanta, GA I live in a majority progressive culture, however in a conservative state. I have lived here for 30 years now and one victory I see is that ALL of the metro Atlanta counties voted for Hillary!! The 4 most populated metro Atlanta counties are Fulton, Dekalb (where I live), Cobb and Gwinnett. Both Fulton and Dekalb have been strongly democratic for a long time. Gwinnett and Cobb were both Republican. Indeed, Newt Gingrich was from Cobb county. But in this election, both Cobb and Gwinnett went Democrat! And several of the other metro counties went for Hillary that probably weren’t Democrat before, such as Henry, Rockdale, Newton and Clayton counties. Clayton and Dekalb are very heavily Democratic counties. There are also many Reconciling Congregations within the metro area as well. So, I think since moving here, the metro area has made progress, but perhaps the rural areas of the state have gotten worse, although a lot of the other urban areas also went for Hillary, such as Columbus, Macon, Savannah, Athens and Augusta.
Get real. It was an election and we don’t always get the president we would like. For the past 8 years that was my lament. President Trump has to operate within the law. He is not a dictator. If kids are afraid to go to school it is because their parents made them that way. I remember an awkward conversation with my young daughter back in the nineties over a blue dress.
Besides, if the election had gone the other way you’d have to spend the next four years reminding your daughter that she has to obey the same laws as everyone else, no matter how rich or famous or well-connected she becomes.
Using ANY politicians as moral examples is not a good idea.
On a more positive note, this might be useful:
http://lifehacker.com/how-i-talked-to-my-kid-about-trump-1788775400
Can you help me understand why in the second sentence you refer to your wife as your partner?
Hi Talbot! It’s a regional, contextual thing. I work with a lot of LGBTQ persons who referred (before marriage equality) to their beloved as their partner. I did the same as it didn’t matter whether my beloved was my legal spouse or whatever–all that mattered was that I had a beloved. Now that marriage is open to everyone, it’s still easier to say. I used to tell people my beloved was my Spouse in Boston, my Wife in rural Oklahoma, and my Partner in Portland. Thanks for asking.
I spent many a night trying to figure out who I would vote for. As a Christian the decision was not easy. I think that any Christian who claims the decision was easy would be considered a liar. Neither candidate has the redeeming qualities we would like for our president.
On one hand you have Donald Trump who seems to be stuck in a perpetual Porky’s rerun where he’s the star of the show and you never know what he’s going to say. His comments about women, immigrants and others make the entire country cringe. His lack of political experience could be a very bad thing or it could be a very good thing. Bad in the fact that he just doesn’t know the processes required to run the entire country or good because he brings an outsider’s perspective into a system that is just totally overrun with corruption and insider relationships. A system where the 1% indeed are getting richer, the middle class is rapidly disappearing and more and more Americans are finding themselves out of work or working two or even three jobs to maintain a somewhat decent lifestyle. I’ve seen this wasting away of the middle class on a micro-level at our church. We’re a small Methodist church. The number of members has not changed dramatically over the years. However the amount of money people are giving to the church every year has decreased significantly. We had a group of people investigate why this was happening. The common denominator was that many of our members are middle age and many of them have lost their decent paying jobs they worked at for many years and now are working in more service sector jobs which do not pay nearly what their old jobs did.
The other side of the coin is Hillary. She has 30 or so years working in politics. Her husband is an ex-president. So she has the experience to occupy the office of president. But she is far from perfect and her stance on abortion up until the baby’s birth for no other reason than the mother decided she didn’t want the baby is abhorrent. If the mother’s health is in danger that’s one thing. But in today’s times those are rare. And she claims to be a Christian. This fact alone should be enough to cause concern. Another moral issue is the allegations that she used her power to silence her husband’s sexual victims. If it was a single person one could understand it was probably not true. But the number of women who came forward with similar stories just leaves too much doubt that the stories are all made up. If you were one of the people who followed the Wikileaks emails, which I did, you would quickly see that most of what Hillary said in public regarding policies is not what she said in private. The relationship between the DNC and George Soros and Wall Street is downright scary and extrapolating the data you would quickly find out under a Hillary presidency the erosion of the middle class would continue. Her foreign policy also is scary. If she followed through with her policy I truly feared a major confrontation with Russia.
I’m from New York State and my vote didn’t mean much, other than to my own conscience. New York has gone Democrat for a long long time. When I weighed out all the pros and cons of both candidates I ultimately voted for Donald Trump. Hillary was our senator for a number of years and she never did anything notable for us. Especially for those of us who do not live in NYC. But the main reason I voted for Donald Trump is because I felt he would be the one who would most try to preserve and protect our constitution. Under Obama the 1st and 2nd amendments were being attacked and that would only get worse and I also expect the 4th amendment would start getting chipped away. Don’t get me wrong, the second amendment is not that important to me. I own a couple guns I use for hunting. But I support the background checks and vetting of potential gun buyers. My concern with the erosion of the 2nd amendment is which amendment is next? Once the president and supreme court had annihilated the 2nd amendment there is a precedent set to attack any others. Christians are already taking it on the chin…religious expression is being attacked in this country as the 1st amendment is being attacked.
This statement you made is what I find disturbing, “Better go and have a sad conversation over breakfast. A conversation about what it means to not get our way, about how no one should ever touch her body without her consent, not even our President, about how no one should hurt her preschool friends who have different colored skin, not even our President. Of how sad I am that role models for her life and early development will not be found in stories told about the highest office in the land.” If your daughter grows up using the president of the United States as her beacon of righteousness then you have failed as a father. Barack Obama used marijuana and cocaine in high school and college. Bill Clinton is an adulterer and Hillary used her powers to denigrate the women that accused him. I am sure that with enough digging you could find dirt on every single president we’ve ever had. My daughter is 25 years old and she’s grown to be an amazing, caring person. My wife, myself, immediate family and church have been her moral compass her entire life. We did not rely on politicians being role models. We did not rely on her friends always being role models. We explained that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. But you do both with dignity and you make the best out of every situation. We’re only on this planet for a very short period of time. “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” It took me a long time to fully understand this one simple line of scripture. Every time something happens that I don’t care for I think about that one single line and how short our lives actually are.
Peace
Well said!