It has been an exhausting and exhilarating week. In America, we elected Joe Biden to be our next president and reaffirmed the power of democracy. I remembered how, just five months ago, Donald Trump had protesters forcibly removed from Lafayette Square here in Washington, strode across the park and held up a Bible as a token of his authority. This weekend, people descended on that same location and danced in the streets cheering his defeat. In that time, we’ve gone from tear gas to tears of joy — and it feels both surprising and pretty great.
The events of this week remind me of these lines from Miller Williams, from his poem “Of History and Hope”:
Who were many people coming together
cannot become one people falling apart.
Who dreamed for every child an even chance
cannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not.
Whose law was never so much of the hand as the head
cannot let chaos make its way to the heart.
Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to child
cannot let ignorance spread itself like rot.
We know what we have done and what we have said,
and how we have grown, degree by slow degree,
believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become—
just and compassionate, equal, able, and free.
Elections continue the work of America. If you lose, there is work to do. And when you win, there’s still work to do. Even with the sense of relief in this particular election, we know much work awaits. Somehow, we’ve got to come back together, restore many dreams, undo the chaos, and pay attention to all we have learned in these difficult years about justice, compassion, equality, moral responsibility, and freedom.
There will be many hard days in the near future, and it is unclear how and when Donald Trump will accept the verdict of the election. And the coronavirus pandemic is growing worse. But we are turning the wheel of history, and I’m of a mind that good things lie ahead.
* * * * *
Despite the news, I’ve not been thinking about politics as much as might be expected — but focusing instead on a writers conference where I’ll be speaking next week. At the conference, I’ll be reflecting on what it means to write in the context of crisis. As I’ve prepared remarks, I realized how the struggles of these last two decades have shaped my work. From the shadow of 9/11 in my earliest books to my struggle to find gratitude in the first months of the Trump presidency in Grateful.
None of us escapes history; and our lives are shaped by great events. Sometimes we feel like history is distant, but the big episodes of war and politics unfold into our lives, shaping us in ways we recognize and ways we can barely see. In effect, history makes us; but as we work and pray and care for others, we are making history as well. History is not merely some impersonal force, not a kind of indiscriminate predestination. Rather, it is a mixture of movements and ideas and the outworking of those things in our own stories. The great stories do not exist without our more discreet ones. There’s a mystery and poetry to it all, and that’s the stuff of being human.
YOU ARE INVITED! If you write or read books that matter – books with substance and soul – then this is the place for you. Writing for Your Life invites you to their Fall 2020 Online Conference, featuring authors Diana Butler Bass, Parker Palmer, Philip Yancey, Sophfronia Scott, Sharon Koenig, Vivian Mabuni, Amy Julia Becker, Brandan Robertson, Karoline Lewis, and Jana Riess.
INSPIRATION:
BLESSING OF HOPE
So may we know
the hope
that is not just
for someday
but for this day—
here, now,
in this moment
that opens to us:
hope not made
of wishes
but of substance,
hope made of sinew
and muscle
and bone,
hope that has breath
and a beating heart,
hope that will not
keep quiet
and be polite,
hope that knows
how to holler
when it is called for,
hope that knows
how to sing
when there seems
little cause,
hope that raises us
from the dead—
not someday
but this day,
every day,
again and
again and
again.
—Jan Richardson, The Cure for Sorrow
Amen
The many needs of the day can be overwhelming until I remember the admonition of Albert Schweitzer: Do "something small in the spirit of Jesus." I can and will do that today. - Doug Carpenter