Here at Communicating Across Boundaries we've done a pretty good job of avoiding the massive elephant (and the donkey) in the room. Both Marilyn and I, although this was not planned or discussed, have largely avoided politics in our writing this election season. I'm not sure what Marilyn's reasons are but mine have been deep and wide: I don't think either candidate needs any more free press, I'm not sure I can say anything that hasn't already been said, I can't suspend my disbelief long enough to formulate an objective sentence, I'm too angry to write coherently. And quite frankly, I'm sick of it!
A couple of weeks ago, my husband Lowell, in his blog, The Liberator Today, quoted conservative commentator Erick Erickson who wrote "A Clinton administration may see the church besieged from the outside, but a Trump administration will see the church poisoned from within." Erickson went on to say, "I think Hillary Clinton will do lasting damage to the country. I cannot vote for her. Having fully weighed my opposition to Trump, I think Donald Trump will do lasting damage to the witness of the Church in America and I therefore cannot vote for him. I am without a candidate. I will not harm my witness nor risk Trump's soul to serve my political desires."
You may or may not agree with Erickson's opinion on Clinton or Trump-I'm not sure I completely do- but surely one thing we can all agree on is that this presidential race has been more ugly and more divisive than most. Trump and Clinton have joined up to divide more families, more groups of friends, more religious communities than anyone would have thought possible. Things have been said, opinions have been discussed, names have been called. Together, Clinton and Trump have successfully arrived at a new type of bipartisanship - both parties are divided and realigned, they've been shuffled and dealt out in surprising ways.
An American president will be voted for on November 8 th,. One candidate will be chosen by the people. The other candidate will have to join the rest of us in coming to grips with the outcomes. Once the president is elected the real work will begin-and I don't actually mean the work of the presidency. Each of us will have to get to work. We have some serious forgiving to do.
It's folly to trivialize or minimize how difficult forgiveness can be. When we're hurt there are a hundred physical and physiological mechanisms responding in us. Biologically we are wired with a fight or flight reaction to pain: our blood pressure rises, our heart rate accelerates, pupils dilate, our muscles tense up. These reactions were given to us to defend our bodies. There's a reason we call them "defense mechanisms." That response transfers into how we respond to emotional pain too. We clam up, shut down, freeze over, self-protect or we scream out in anger, rage or protest. Reacting is hardwired into us at our creation.
Forgiveness works against how we're naturally determined to be. Part of the work of forgiveness is working against our natural selves. Up hill, up stream, against the current. We cannot will or make forgiveness happen. Poet Alexander Pope once said, "To err is human; to forgive divine." It is virtually impossible to do the work of forgiveness without a measure of supernatural grace.
My husband Lowell went on to write:
We each bring our hearts to God with the humble prayer of examen, and ask him to reveal what each of us brought (or failed to bring) to our current state of affairs. God is generous ... Surely, he will examine our hearts with gentleness and woo us to the Cross. If we have said a harsh word to another person in the heat of 2016, did not speak the truth in love, or knowingly perpetrated a lie for argumentative advantage, then we should seek out that person or persons and ask for forgiveness. ... Reform will also lead us to forgiving others, and I do believe God will not nurture reform without it involving forgiveness one to another.**Collectively we've been through a rather traumatic election cycle. We'll need to be kind to ourselves and to each other. It's going to take time to recover. Foundations that we have presumed to be firm have suddenly revealed their fragility. Indisputables have been disputed. Unquestionables have been questioned. Presumptions have been poked and prodded. We've felt fear and dread. We've been incredulous and angry. Panic has poked through our patriotism. The spirit of the Trump campaign has given us permission to be rude and unkind, to not censor our commentary on those that are different than we are. The demons of our demagogues have been dark and destructive. Democracy is not the safe space we thought it was.
In a spirit of reconciliation we need to roll up our sleeves and engage our broken communities with acceptance and hope and work towards healing. We need to grieve our losses, own our despairs and our disappointments. Now is the time to begin the work of forgiveness. It won't be easy. Forgiveness never is. But it's important work for the sake of our souls. For the past two years we've bitched about political polarization. Unity can only be realized on the holy ground of forgiveness. It's the start line, a place for both sides to meet, in the ongoing political race. Forgiveness alone provides the freedom to move forward for the forgiven and for the forgiver. It gives us a vision for hope. Slowly our focus shifts away from the ugliness of the past to a glimmer of hope for the future.
Ronald Rolheiser in his book, Sacred Fire, writes, "As we age, we can begin to trim down our spiritual vocabulary, and eventually we can get it down to three words: Forgive, forgive, forgive! To die with a forgiving heart is the ultimate moral and religious imperative. We should not delude ourselves on this. All the dogmatic and moral purity in the world does little for us if our hearts are bitter and incapable of forgiveness." (p256)
**( http://www.theliberator.today/blog/2016/10/12/naamans-voters-guide-for-2016-4how-quickly)
*Photo credit: johnlund.com