I live in New Hampshire. Election season plays out differently here than in many other states because the season starts here -it’s something we take pride in. This close to November, you can usually feel the wariness from the onslaught of ads, mailers, and water cooler conversation. Something I have noticed ratcheting up in the last fourteen years or so has been the move from talking about candidates to talking about the people who would vote for those candidates, and this is what I want to address.
Something that defines humanity, regardless of race, creed, gender, or class, is our desire for safety. A function of safety operates on the intellectual and spiritual level in the ego. This survival mechanism does a beautiful job of keeping threats emotionally distant and “out there” to protect us.
We know from history that much violence and injustice has been done in the name of righteousness. We have all excused ourselves and our in-groups for failure to live up to higher values. We have all been extra critical of people we don’t align with for those same things. We have all grouped people together under an umbrella of what we believe connects them to keep their fears, their concerns, their presence, and their ideas away from us.
Every great spiritual tradition worth its salt addresses this concept head-on.
“Love your neighbor. “
“Treat others as you want to be treated. “
“Whatever is hateful to you, do not do unto your fellow man.”
"None of you believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself."
This is missing each time someone is called a “Trumper.” This is missing every time someone is canceled or dismissed as some kind of “phobic” or “ism.” This is missing every time someone is called a “Sheep” or “Woke.” This is missing every time someone is disparaged for how they are registered to vote. This is missing every time we are categorizing a person, rather than addressing the behavior.
What is deeply present, however, is the comfort and safety of feeling right, of feeling better than, and morally superior.
What I am interested in, not just in this election cycle but in life, is not what separates us, makes us unique, or all the identities people attach to themselves. These are tactics we use to bind our anxiety, and it works in the moment, but never in the long run. What I am interested in is unity. Not the unity of everyone believing the same thing, voting for the same person, or the unity of the mob, but the unity that comes from the hard work of listening and understanding, of valuing what someone else values beyond what feels comfortable. Your conclusions may not change, but your fear of that person and their beliefs might.
This is the work of Spirit in each of our lives. It is always bringing us into unity inside our environment, our relationships, our bodies, our work, and our minds. The mark of the Spirit is a felt presence of Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, and Self-Control (Galatians 5:22). If they are not present, there is an open invitation to find them and bring them forth, for the betterment of yourself and everyone around you. This is an opportunity to be in unity with the imperfections in others.
Everything they are guilty of is something we are all guilty of.
When you are frustrated with Donald for being unconscious in his speech, ask yourself when was the last time you engaged in that same behavior. When you are casting a cold eye on Kamala for the claim that she slept her way to the top, ask yourself when was the last time you used yourself in some way to get what you wanted, no matter how subtle.
When you are critical of their tribalism, their cowardice, their language, their arrogance, and their failings remember that three fingers are pointing back at you.
Kamala Harris is an imperfect woman working inside an imperfect system who will be representing imperfect people if she is elected. Donald Trump is an imperfect man who is working inside an imperfect system who will be representing imperfect people if he is re-elected. Donald Trump is not the Anti-Christ. Kamala Harris is not either.
They are both human Children of God. They are both here for a divine purpose. They both have divine value. Neither of them is the Savior of Humanity. They are not deities. They are ordinary people. They put their pants on one leg at a time. They fart. They get sick. They feel lonely and tired. They mistreat people, consciously and unconsciously. They are mortal. They will live and breathe and die one day.
I have lost relational equity with people I loved dearly out of an arrogant assumption that I was right. I believed that I had appropriately gauged their morals and their values and found them wanting. I was disappointed in their character as I dismissed them when I should have been disappointed in my own hubris.
I thought that I was one of the good guys. I had never paused to ask if the things I believed, voted for, and made moral assumptions about could also cause harm. I had never taken the time to take the concerns of people that I loved who thought differently than me and place them in my heart as my own, to value them as highly, and let that widen me.
My idea of loving my neighbor stopped at the people I thought that needed me to vote on their behalf. Loving my neighbor includes those people, but it also includes the people who are dismissed as different and dangerous, uneducated, or misguided.
The world is not broken into good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains.
I am both a hero and a villain, as are you. We contain universes and multitudes.
“The peace the world pretends to desire is no peace at all…so instead of loving what you think is peace, love other men and love God above all. Instead of hating the men that you think are warmakers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed- but hate these things in yourself, not in another.”
-Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation 1961
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