Dear Edwards Church Community,

This year November comes with anxiety casting a shadow over the season we associate with Thanksgiving.  Election day has never been as fraught, at least in the memories of most voting age citizens. I want to offer some perspective, not to minimize the reasons for concern, but to suggest another way to think about the current crisis and constructive resources for responding to it.

Perspective:  I recommend the poem-prayer by Steve Garnaas-Holmes emailed to the whole community on Monday, Oct. 28. The key lines in it for me are:

God is not a Big Guy with a magic finger
he deploys now and then (but not always).

God is the Love at the heart of all being,
as constant as gravity, infinitely attentive,
and can’t be more present or active than right now.

When we ask for God’s help,
what we mean is to align ourselves
with the great power of God’s grace already at work.

The complete prayer “Please, God …” is at https://unfoldinglight.net/

It can be helpful to return to this perspective (or adopt it for the first time) when confronting anything that generates anxiety in you. A mature understanding of God must, I believe, acknowledge that the evidence for God intervening directly in history is mostly limited to the Bible. And as much as I treasure the sacred text, I do not read it as a literal record of history.  Rather than show why we should rely on God to change something unpleasant or unfair in life, I read scripture as saying – among other things –that humans need to accept their role as stewards, not just consumers, of creation. God has limited God’s own power and made us responsible for the planet and all life on it.

Resources: A number of you are fans of Krista Tippet, best known for the long running On Being radio show (now a podcast). In her most recent post, Krista speaks of Palestinian and Israeli individuals who have been friends with each other and conversation partners over many years, and how their friendships have been strained by the war:

“There was so much grief being held in the bodies and spirits in that room, of course, and long friendships stressed and frayed unfathomably. But what I can report, what buoyed me, is that the long years of conversation and friendship also held in the bodies in that room were persevering, extending what love and compassion they could muster, forgiving each other when it was too much to ask.”

Since at least 2016, we have experienced increasing stress with each Presidential election  cycle. The stakes, the fear, and the vitriol have escalated with each cycle. Krista Tippet is  inspired by the resilience shown in her Israeli and Palestinian friends’ capacity to take the long view of belonging together. She imagines how we might knit back together the social fabric of the United States in the aftermath of this election. She sees, in the reservoirs of compassion built into friendships that are nurtured over many years, the capacity to forgive, reknit and rebuild.

She relies not only on the example of her Palestinian and Israeli friends, but on her own frequent conversation partner, the professional mediator and peace builder John Paul Lederach, who has worked with civil war combatants on multiple continents over decades to forge relationships that will hold together a lasting peace. His brand new book, A Pocket Guide for Facing Down a Civil War, which I have ordered but not yet read, describes the steps we can all take to cultivate relationships that will be the foundation for   positive social change. Maybe even a Beloved Community or Kin-dom of God.

I did peak at excerpts online, and the gist of the book appears to be that lasting positive social change is built on the foundation of relationships, individual people who are open to knowing and being known by others who are different from themselves. Sincere curiosity and the willingness to learn and have one’s heart and mind changed is required – on all sides. It does not need all of us, but it does need enough of us.

This is not just pie in the sky stuff, friends. In a book group I have been part of for most of the last decade, we have heard from each other about groups in Israel-Palestine and here in the United States that are already engaged in this work. You could be too.

In faith, with hope, for love,

Michael

To read the full SPIRE click here.