The Soul of the Nation
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
November 8, 2020
In the end, I would say that it was worth the wait, this week, as the anticipated blue wave proved to be more of a blue trickle. Yesterday afternoon, as word spread that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had been elected President and Vice-President, scenes of jubilant crowds gathering to celebrate brought joy and relief to everyone around the world who have been waiting since Tuesday evening for word. There was dancing in the streets. The stress and the pent-up emotions that have been building for days, and perhaps years, suddenly could be released, and people flooded city parks and squares. Even the weather seemed to be participating; with bright, warm sunshine, it was a day to be outdoors celebrating. We wouldn’t have enjoyed it or appreciated it so much if we hadn’t been pacing the floors for days, checking every device in the house for updates every five minutes.
One small news item brought me up short. The Mayor of Paris tweeted, “Welcome back, America!” I was delighted by this, at first. How wonderful it would be to think that we are back, in our accustomed leadership role, bringing our moral voice and authority, setting the example for freedom and democracy around the world.
But we are not really ‘back’, because in reality, we were never truly there in the first place. There is a shadow over all the celebrations, all the congratulations. The shadow is this: for four years many of us managed to convince ourselves that the election of Donald Trump was a mistake, an aberration. “This isn’t really who we are,” we assured ourselves, and the world. “We aren’t really a country that separates immigrant children from their parents, and then puts them in cages. We reject the hatred that led to the Unite the Right demonstrations in Charlottesville three years ago. We don’t want walls across our southern border. We believe that Black Lives Matter.”
We convinced ourselves that our vision of America prevails. And yesterday, it did, but we must recognize the fact that over 70 million of our fellow citizens voted to return Donald Trump to the White House for four more years. His election in 2016 was not a mistake. We cannot ignore this. We must not ignore this. Even as we celebrate, our joy is shadowed by the fact that over 70 million people were willing to ignore the racism and the cruelty of the current administration, and that many of them don’t understand the reasoning of those who voted for the Democrats. I had hoped for a landslide. It’s better for us that the election played out the way it has, so that we see the reality of how divided our country is.
We are forced to confront this painful truth. And if we ask ourselves how we got to this place, we are forced to understand that the soul of this country has always been divided. There has never been one unified vision for our nation. In order to form a ‘more perfect union’, the founders had to compromise with one another. So they gave us limited rights to vote. They created the Electoral College to try to prevent larger states from gaining too much power. The founders had to balance slave states vs. free states, urban vs. rural. Culturally, we have always struggled with the myth of the rugged individual, setting off to settle the vast West, versus the need for community, for caring for one another, to create the more perfect union. In so many aspects of our story, our culture, we have to admit that the country was founded on top of a cracked, split foundation and we continue to confront the divisions and different understandings to this day.
Earlier we heard the first verse of America, the Beautiful. Since the first verse is by far the best known, I looked up the rest of the lyrics. I was struck by how the flaws and divisions inherent in America’s soul even today appeared throughout the song:
“Oh, beautiful for pilgrim feet, whose stern, impassioned stress,
A thoroughfare for freedom beat, across the wilderness!”
There is the concept of Manifest Destiny, that we had the right to take land for ourselves that belonged to indigenous people, and displace them. This uncontrolled growth – the frontier, the pioneers – was still celebrated in 1893, when the song was first written. We are still coping with the aftermath today: abject poverty among Native Americans, disenfranchisement, lack of opportunity, loss of language and culture. We have struggled throughout our history to remember that black and brown people are equally human. I think of a line from the next verse:
“Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears.” I think of the Trail of Tears, of the brutality endured by people of color throughout our history. There have been many, many tears, so often unnoticed. We are so unaware of the impact we have had on others.
Katharine Lee Bates, the author of the poem, was aware that America had not yet fully lived into the aspirations of the founders. In recent days I have had these words running through my head:
“America! America! God mend thine every flaw. Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law.” The Coronavirus makes these words feel very relevant today. We see again the old demand for absolute freedom, for total liberty: to not wear masks, to reject public health measures that would protect one another from the virus. We see this demand for freedom as the root of the bitter disagreement over gun control, that sense that one’s freedom is more important than someone else’s life and safety.
And so, here we are. Joe Biden won solidly, with a message of healing our divisions, grown so hard over the past few years. But how do we heal this democracy, and the soul of our nations, divided from the start?
The Quaker author Parker Palmer had this to say, in his book Healing the Heart of Democracy: “For those of us who want to see democracy survive and thrive – and we are legion – the heart is where everything begins: that grounded place in each of us where we can overcome fear, rediscover that we are members of one another, and embrace the conflicts that threaten democracy as openings to new life for us and for our nation.” (Healing the Heart of Democracy, Parker Palmer, Kindle edition, pp. 9-10.)
It is so easy to think of politics as a game, or, for some people, a war. Maps, red vs. blue, statistics, and polling. There are campaigns, boat parades, rolling rallies. As so often happens, we focus on the activities of the head, and not of the heart.
Over the years, Parker Palmer has suffered from bouts of depression. As a result, he has become drawn to President Abraham Lincoln, who also had depression. Lincoln’s pain, his awareness of the darkness within himself and his understanding and acceptance that it was part of the wholeness of his nature, helped him to hold our divided country with compassion. Think of his famous words: “with malice toward none, with charity for all.” Lincoln was broken-hearted. But his heart did not shatter; rather, it opened, so that he was able to offer compassion and empathy for all the suffering created by the Civil War.
To heal, we must open our hearts. Given the vitriol, the derision and contempt that each side feels toward the other, this can be very difficult to do. Of course, there are things that cannot be tolerated: violence, hate speech, rejection of the rule of law that protects us all.
Churches can play a role in this. Of course we cannot directly engage in the game of politics, and promoting one candidate over another. But we speak the language of the heart: the language of the heart is also the language of religion. Think of our seven principles: our belief in justice, equity, and compassion. Our understanding that all life here on Earth is connected. Our hope for wholeness, rather than division. Framing issues in this way is healing. Can we connect more actively with like-minded people, and use our voices and our values to help change the toxic rhetoric?
Parker Palmer wrote, “The politics of our time is the ‘politics of the broken-hearted’…an expression from the language of human wholeness…This is the politics that Lincoln practiced as he led from a heart broken open to the whole of what it means to be human – simultaneously meeting the harsh demands of political reality and nurturing the seeds of new life.”
My friends, we are poised at the beginning of a new time. Let’s take time to celebrate, to rest, to heal ourselves. We have been holding great grief and fear for too long. And then, may we look for the heartbreak, for the brokenness in our national life, and find ways to respond with love and compassion, not with contempt. May we look for ways to connect with people who share our values, and strengthen our community life, so that we can be engaged, and connected, and part of the whole. This is religious work, and by engaging wherever we can, we can help to heal the torn soul of the nation.
Remember the words of Terry Tempest Williams: Question. Stand. Speak. Act.
Blessed be.
Amen.
