Election Day Letter from Fr. Daniel
Posted on November 5, 2024 by admin No comments
A letter to the parish from Fr. Daniel after Election Day:
I am writing this on Election Day, after morning prayer in the church. It will of course be a day of consequence in an election more unpredictable than any so far in our lifetime. By the time we are reading this together on Wednesday morning, the ground will have shifted again, even if the election outcome is still unknown.
Living with that level of unpredictability and uncertainty, and with a certain amount of powerlessness to affect the outcome, is deeply uncomfortable but not new. Throughout history, our most common reaction is to try to get on the side of power, or to mount a resistance, or to find the guarantee, or to distance and protect ourselves. These reactions have their place, but unless we are more deeply grounded, we often become partisans in the same old winners/losers battles that ultimately squander life.
The Way of Jesus, and the teaching of all wisdom teachers throughout history, is to create communities of practice where we learn to first ground and calm ourselves, knowing that we are beloved by the Source of our being. Then we extend that belovedness by standing in solidarity with those who are most marginalized, and by engaging with fierce and relentless love even with our enemies.
It may seem like a tall order at this moment, but it is a way that works. It is larger than any election or regime or even movement. It is part of that “long arc of the moral universe that always bends toward justice.“
Today as you read/listen to the news, and as you pray and breathe and take a long walk in nature, and pray some more, root these small actions in that great arc in which we are all evolving, and then radiate that out into the world through the tandem streams of solidarity and inclusion.
We are all brief moments in time, and this is a good time to feel all that we feel, and then let that flow forward toward love-in-action. We can and will get really good at that practice in the days, months, and years ahead.
We do this together, and we do this in any weather, and we do this following Jesus’ lead. Onward, saints!
– Father Daniel
PS: Here’s an interesting piece for post-election day by The Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris, the first woman and first African-American bishop in the Anglican Communion (the worldwide group of churches of which the Episcopal Church is a part). I had the privilege of knowing her well over a number of years, and wow, she was a fierce and loving practitioner of this way of solidarity and inclusion. Read her words HERE, and be encouraged.