Can We Get Through This?

If so, how?

These days, I feel a malaise, almost depression, over the state of our country: the violence, the cruelty, the disintegration of democratic laws and norms, and the polarization of the country around all these issues. My political activity is confined to the nonpartisan work of the League of Women Voters, and I spend hours every week in meetings and study about protecting democracy. The home for my spiritual life is in the Presbyterian Church, USA, and in the PCUSA church in my community. The threads running through these fields are suddenly blinking red.

The blinking red throughline appeared recently on a Sunday. It started when I read a David French column in the New York Times, headlined“There is a Path out of this Divide.” French is a columnist I would label a Christian, conservative intellectual who challenges my progressive/liberal Christian mindset just enough to make me think and not enough that I quit reading. The substance of his article was grace, grace for someone whose actions in no way seem deserving. He reminded readers of the LDS church in Grand Blanc, Michigan, where a man killed four people and injured eight when he drove his truck into their church, which set it on fire, and then the man started randomly shooting people. The grace of this event happened not long after it ended so tragically. A member of the church started an online fundraising campaign to help the family of the man who committed this horrendous act. Grace is the kindness, love, and compassion that is extended to the undeserving by God or other people. I probably fall short of good behavior both outwardly and inwardly several times a day, so I am a big believer in grace. It would seem appropriate for me to extend it to others. French proposes that through acts of grace toward one another, we could ease the divide in our country.

After reading the article, I went to church and taught children’s Sunday school as I do every Sunday I am in town. It was the beginning of Fall Break in the school system, so I didn’t expect many. In preparation for an unknown number of children and ages, I decided to show a VeggieTales video. In these tales, Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber lead a band of veggies through all kinds of life lessons based on stories from the Bible, with universal themes such as “love your neighbor”. In the one I chose for last Sunday, there are two rival cities, the veggies in one city have shoes on their heads, and the other have pots on their heads. They despise each other and throw shoes and pots to show their displeasure. A cucumber sets out on a trip from the shoetown. A trio of asparagus from the same city attack him, steal his lunch money, and stick him in a hole with his head in the ground. The mayor and a doctor from the shoetown pass by and see the cucumber with his head stuck in a hole. They discuss through song “how busy, how busy, how busy” they are, and then pass him by. Eventually, a little broccoli guy comes upon the poor cucumber. He has a pot on his head and ruminates on how mean the shoeheads have been to him and other potheads. But then he asks himself if he would want help from the cucumber if he were in the same state, and his answer was yes! So the little broccoli gets the cucumber out of the hole and takes him to the hospital in the shoehead city. They meet up with the mayor and doctor in the hospital, and they all sing a song about loving our neighbor and how good YOU feel when you help the OTHER. “Grace upon grace”, the scriptures say.

After Sunday School, I walked out of the Education Building and into the sanctuary to worship with the purple community of First Presbyterian Church. I say purple because this congregation is pretty politically divided. All that division percolates below the surface most of the time, but rears its ugly head on occasion. Events like COVID masking cause eruptions, as do sermons or Sunday School lessons considered too liberal. I assume that if those things were seen as far-right politically, they might cause some ripples as well. Our pastor seems to stay inside the parameters enough to avoid conflict, but he has a big challenge. The sermon, the prayers, and the music all fit the Gospel reading for the day: Luke 17:5-6. Translation (The Message

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The apostles came up and said to the Master, “Give us more faith.”

But the Master said, “You don’t need more faith. There is no ‘more’ or ‘less’ in faith. If you have a bare kernel of faith, say the size of a poppy seed (mustard seed), you could say to this sycamore tree, ‘Go jump in the lake,’ and it would do it.

This caused me to think about the children’s reaction to the VeggieTale that day. They knew immediately what the veggies needed to do for the cucumber. They could interpret the story easily: “We should be nice to everyone. We should help others.” You and I do, too. But these days, feelings have become so intense that we have a difficult time even talking with people we have been friends with for years or family with whom we share years of common experiences. We merely avoid the people or avoid any topic of disagreement. Jesus is not having any of our excuses. He seems to say that if we have even the smallest bit of faith, we can do anything.

What does any of this “Christian stuff” have to do with the systematic disregard of the Constitution by the current leaders of our country? A few things, I think.

Nothing is going to change in our country and in our government until we change. We must quit seeing people as the “other” who do not think as we do. Cynthia Bourgeault, in “The Wisdom Jesus”, tells her readers that underlying all the desires, fears, and behaviors on the surface of our lives, we are pretty much the same. She maintains that the human mind tends to think in dualities. There is good and bad, evil and righteousness, and we sort people the same way. Wisdom teachers like Jesus, Buddha, Rumi, and others challenge us to deepen our consciousness enough to blur those lines. The only way to do it is to get silent enough to understand our own motivations, desires, and fears, and then listen to others so we can understand theirs.

A friend who regularly eats Sunday lunch with three or four very conservative friends who expouse ideas he finds questionable has challenged me several times to sit down with a kind conservative woman he knows and have a conversation. I finally agreed to do it if he would be there and facilitate the conversation, making it a safe place for both of us. Maybe I can get my feet wet this way and then have some conversations with people I used to see a lot but now avoid.

This does not mean I won’t attend the No Kings March this Saturday, write letters to my congressional and state representatives, and work hard in the League of Women Voters to protect democracy, especially voting rights. But I recognize that none of that will work if I don’t also reach out and listen to those who think differently. I do have the faith of a mustard seed after all.