Non-Partisan Words of Hope on Election Day

I have now voted in many elections.  Some seemed like the most consequential ones in my lifetime--and in later years, I looked back at those oh so consequential elections that no longer loomed as large.  I've voted for a variety of people, and usually, I could assume that the ones I didn't vote for would do their best and wouldn't be that bad.

I've voted for women before; at times I felt hopeful about their chances, and at other times, I was voting for the thrill of voting for a woman.  My first presidential election was in 1984, and I was one of the few people who voted for Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro.  How long ago that seems, when an incumbent candidate was running on a "Morning in America" theme and the opponent offered similar sentiments, if not similar policy proposals.

On election morning of 2016, I made this Facebook post:  "For those of us feeling fretful on this election day, I say, "Be not afraid!" We are a nation of quilters, adept at taking frayed scraps and turning them into comforters. We are a nation of tinkerers, who can take metal scraps and turn them into cars and computers. We will be OK."

Most days, I still believe that.  There are seasons that remind me more forcefully of that truth--like the month after Hurricane Helene where I've been astonished at how many people were out helping each other.  There are other seasons that lead me to despair.  Most seasons are a fairly even mix of hope and despair.

Here's a look at my office door, with sentiments that we need today and every day:

I take a long view; even when it's bleak, I think that there have been much bleaker times, in both U.S. history and world history.   I'm thinking of eastern Europe--that wall that came down suddenly in 1989. I'm thinking about Nelson Mandela released from jail and shortly thereafter, to become the first freely elected president of South Africa and a nation transformed--that outcome was so impossible that few of us dared to hope for it. Somewhere in my photo albums, I have a fading picture of a friend wearing his "Free Mandela" t-shirt. He'd been in jail for our whole lives, and we expected he would die there, t-shirts or no t-shirts.

I think it's important to remember how strong the forces of evil seemed then. But we built our shantytowns on the lawn, we helped Central Americans get to Canadian safety, we demanded changes in U.S. policy which were ignored or dismissed. We bought our protest albums and went to concerts. Elders sneered and warned us about the necessity of establishing anti-communist bulwarks, even if they were staffed by genocidal maniacs, as much of Latin America was in the 1980's.

Now those seem like very different times--but perhaps they are not so very different.  Now we wait, and in the coming days, we'll have a better sense of the work that will need to be done.  Now would be a good time to pray and to visualize and to hope.

If you came here hoping for prayers, I wrote some non-partisan prayers for election day and put them in this blog post.