Voting

Voting

“During the 2016 presidential campaign, the Pew Research Center polled the American public on its assessment of the ways the candidates, pollsters, and press had conducted themselves. ..Respondents revealed that seemingly daily during the election cycle standards of human decency diminished. Candidates were willing to say anything to win. Some candidates’ behavior, which in prior election cycles would have disqualified one from office.. were instead celebrated by supporters. This led many to despair that something had been irretrievably lost in the American consciousness.” Barkley Thompson, In the Midst of the City, p. 530

Robert and I early voted on the fifth day. People were standing in line outside in the cold for almost an hour. As you know, the first day we went to two voting places and could not find a parking place. These are the signs of hope that people are caring about their country, maybe even the world and even the environment.

What we most should fear is not those we did not vote for and their policies. What we must most fear is apathy, the feeling that what we think or say does not make a difference, finally changing to not caring. The opposite of love is not hate. It is apathy, indifference, not caring at all.

When I talk with people who express despair about their country, we always come to the questions of where is God in all of this. Some throw up their hands and say, “Absent!” Most after saying this will stop and realize what they have said. They know this is not their core belief even though certainly we all at times feel the absence of God.

We are called to do our part to stay connected to the God of our understanding. We are to study scripture, discuss it, digest it, follow a rule of life, be connected to a spiritual community, care for those who are poor, sick, lonely, and weak, take on spiritual practices that keep us connected to the one we may intermittently think or feel is absent. If we do all this, my experience is that there is no time for despair! We also will always find the face of God, Christ, the holy Spirit in those in need. When we see that love, it is always reflected back to us and we eventually find the Christ again within us.

My prayer is that hope will remain in the lives of those whose candidates will lose just as hope will be so prominent in those whose candidates will win. Hope is a huge energy source. I have seen it in people who are sick. As long as they have hope, I see the energy to live and do what it takes to seek wellness.

Perhaps part of our divide in this country stems from those who have lost hope.

I am voting for hope.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

Matthew Shepard

Matthew Shepard

“ Their bodies are buried in peace, but their name lives on generation after generation. Ecclesiasticus 44: 14

The ashes of Matthew Shepard were laid to rest yesterday in a crypt at Washington National Cathedral where Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan are also buried.. It was twenty years ago in 1998 that the openly gay twenty-one-year-old student was brutally beaten, tied to a fence and left for dead outside of Laramie, Wyoming. He served as an acolyte in his Episcopal church and always found church to be a safe place.. This picture from dailyoffice.wordpress.com is taken when he visited Rome in 1993. He wanted to go into the diplomatic service.

Matthew’s murder brought to our national awareness about hate crimes. I intermittently could do nothing else but say prayers all day yesterday for the hate and prejudices and partisanship so openly present in our country still today. In the past our prejudices were there but often secretly and carefully concealed. Today they are not hidden and most of us wear them like a fine garment.

Maybe this is a good thing. When our prejudices are open and on the outside, eventually we and others may see how ugly and harmful they are such as the recent bombing attempts sent to ten locations this past week. Hopefully the openness of all this ugliness will allow us to eventually realize we must walk across the aisle and listen to each other and eventually look for the divine spark, the God, the Christ in each other.

I am also always reminded that when I am so overcome by the sins of another, I must stop and evaluate what part that ugliness may also be in me. It as well is carefully concealed..

Sharing where we are on this journey with spiritual friends can give us insight and sometimes peace. When our prejudices are just in our head, they sound so reasonable, but when we speak them out to another, sometimes they sound so awful, and they lose their power.

My experience also is that the awfulness of hate and prejudice develops because of the absence of love. Hate and fear seem to fill the vacuum when love is not present or has never been offered.

Offering and being more open with the love we know is at least a starting place for all of us. Another starting point is praying daily for those with whom we disagree. Barbara Crafton in her note yesterday reminds us that praying for those we consider enemies can turn them into human beings rather than monsters as we turn them over to God for God’s love when we are not capable of it.

Let us continue to pray for each other, especially as this mid-term election comes closer.

Joanna joannasaeibert.com

bread on the water

Bread on the Water

“Send out your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will get it back.“ Ecclesiastes 11:1

Yesterday I was privileged to be with a group of interfaith ministers at the Clinton Presidential Library hoping to work together and share resources about addiction in face of the opioid crisis. The Clinton Foundation sponsored the event and will be working with all of us in the coming year. They started a similar dialogue in Houston, and now Little Rock is the second city to be involved. I think their next city is Jacksonville, Florida.

It was thought provoking to be the beneficiary of an international foundation in our own locality that we have supported. I could only remember this well-known saying from Ecclesiastes of bread cast upon the water returning.

The stories from the faith groups were similar and different depending on their view and personal experience with addiction, but we share a common problem. As I sat there in that Great Hall overlooking downtown Little Rock, I kept remembering that our strength overcoming a difficult situation is in community. We each add our experience and contribute to the solution. Recovery occurs in community. Solutions to recovery occur in community. Support of those trying to help others experience recovery occurs in community. None of us has all the answers.

I have learned all this by meeting with and staying connected to spiritual friends who keep reminding me of how I most experience the God of my understanding in community. I come full circle like the bread on the water as I am reminded each morning at Morning Prayer in the Prayer of St. Chrysostom. “.. and you have promised through your well-beloved Son that when two or three are gathered together in his Name you will be in the midst of them.” Book of Common Prayer, p. 102.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com