Reclaiming Hope Amid Fear - Election Day (Part 1)
As election day approaches, tension and anxiety are rising to a feverish pitch across the country. What will be the fall out, and how will people and our nation endure the potential chaos and uncertainty that ensues? It is at this moment that we—you, me and others—must reclaim hope. Now.
I am writing to you before the election with the first part of my message about hope; I will write again immediately after the election.
Now, before you read on, I want you to just close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Breathe.
Okay, ready? Please, read on.
A desire for hope always comes from a need for hope. Today, fear and division are rampant in much of our nation (and indeed the world). We make instant judgments about one another based on a T-shirt or a hat someone is wearing, the color of their skin, where they live. Our politicians and news media intentionally manufacture and stoke fears and divisions for their own gain, and social media only makes matters worse.
Add to this turmoil the fact that we are still working through the worst pandemic in over 100 years, wrestling with a reckoning with racism and social injustice, while many people and regions are reeling from economic changes.
It all is crazy-making. There is a kind of nagging despair that has set in among us. A deep and often debilitating anxiety. A disorientation, where it can be hard to figure out what is true and what isn’t, what is real and what isn’t, who is trustworthy and who isn’t. People tell us they trust God, their faith, themselves, and those they personally know. No one else. Think about that. I write about all this in Civic Virus: Why Polarization Is a Misdiagnosis.
Here’s the thing. When any of us faces anxiety and despair in our life, our instinct can be to deny it, turn away from it, wish for it to disappear. We want to close our eyes. After all, we’re human.
The prophets told us that in order to engage our imagination about what can be, we must first be real about what is. We must square up with reality. Be attuned to it. Only then can our imagination be relevant in creating the changes or progress—or a better society—that we seek.
What I also know from working in hard-hit communities from Flint, MI, to Newtown, CT, from Jackson, MS, to Butte County, CA, is that we cannot live in the space of despair; yes, we must know it, we must embrace it, but we must not surrender or succumb to it. Never.
For now, my first message to you is this: No matter your political persuasion, and the outcome of these elections, acknowledge the chaos and uncertainty swirling around us. It’s here. It’s real. There’s no denying it. At the same time, our task is to make hope real for ourselves and others. We can do this; we have done it before. We will do it now.
So, breathe. We must create a civic counterforce to the ailments that beset us. There’s work to do. And from this work, we will gain renewed hope. Immediately following the election, I will write to you about how each of us can actively create hope in our lives. Stay tuned. Write back to me.