And so, it arrives. The battle lines are drawn. The yard signs are planted. The pundits have exhausted every angle of analysis and argument. And for all the ink spilled and money spent, the polls are stuck in a dead heat. Nov. 5 looms like a storm cloud on the horizon, a long-anticipated day of judgment. And the only thing that everyone can agree on is that they are afraid.
I’m afraid too. But not just about how the ballots will break next Tuesday. I’m also worried about what we are going to do after that. How are we going to move forward after almost exactly half the country will have lost? No one likes to lose. We have to decide now, before we are sorted into winners and losers, that there is something more important than winning: healing and unity. If the winners take their victory as permission to dominate and denigrate their opponents, we will be stuck in endless political trench warfare. Instead, we need people who desire, above all, to come together with those on the other side. That is the only chance we have to mend the torn fabric of our common life.
We have to decide now, before we are sorted into winners and losers, that there is something more important than winning: healing.
This will not be easy. But it is not impossible. I take comfort in knowing this is neither the first, nor the worst time our country has been ideologically divided, nor are we the only society to have experienced vicious divisions between its citizens. In situations far more dire than our own, we have seen people and governments can choose healing over hate, cooperation over domination, and unity over division. We can learn from these places and the people who have helped chart this course.
This is the tack we have chosen this fall at Christ & St. Luke’s. As we prepare for Nov. 5 and its aftermath, we are studying the work of Pádraig Ó Tuama, the contemporary Irish spiritual writer, teacher, and conflict mediator. Ó Tuama spent formative years in Belfast after The Troubles, and from 2014-2019 led the Corrymeela Community, Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation community.
Capitalizing on the resources of art, prayer, and storytelling, Ó Tuama offers a way forward for societies roiled by conflict by bringing people together, asking them to be brave enough to plumb the depths of their own experiences and express themselves in ways that bring to light those deep human truths which transcend the superficialities that divide us. His work has been invaluable to our congregation already and will only be more so as we try to repair that which has been broken in our nation and neighborhoods: trust, respect, affection, and commitment to the common good.
But you don’t have to take my word for it, you can hear from him yourself. Because Ó Tuama will be coming to Norfolk to share his hard-won wisdom with all who want to hear it. On Saturday at 5:00 p.m. he will be the speaker for the inaugural Jim Sell Community Conversation, a public initiative based out of Christ & St. Luke’s and started in memory of a beloved priest of our parish who loved to bring together people from the community to have conversations that make a difference on topics that matter. And there could be no more important conversation to have right now than how to heal our societal wounds.
With just days to go until Nov. 5, my deepest prayer is that when it is over there will emerge from the wreckage more people willing to work for healing than for harm. If you are one of those people, I hope you will consider coming Saturday, so that we can begin that work together, no matter who you are voting for on Election Day.
