What Matters More

 The election remains both an uncertainty and a necessity.  It is exhausting not knowing and yet feeling profoundly unhappy that the results, whatever they are, won't fix the fundamental problem.   Half the nation thinks the other half hates it...and the other half is sure that the half that isn't them is hateable. Everything about this is wearying because it does seem (if social media is to be believed) as if we are being reduced as a country to an Us and Them --which is not what allows our country to thrive. 

I know no one reads blogs anymore, but since it's my corner of the internet universe I'm going to say something.   People don't vote for all the reasons we ascribe. They are not all of their vote, nor are they only their vote.  There are the 365 days of the year of living, of doing, of treating others as human beings that should be considered when deciding if someone ought to be cut out of one's life.  Perhaps it is simpler to use a one strike and you're gone, but reality is that each of us, all of us, are more complex than the binary system of voting reveals.  

There are pro-life democrats and people who vote democrat despite the party platform because they believe government's role in providing a safety net to the poor and the sick is part of being pro-life and a part that should be strengthened.   There are republicans who advocate for the immigrant, who want us to not be poor stewards of the government or slavishly devoted to corporations and CEO's over middle class people.  They just aren't on the top of anyone's ticket.  They're our neighbors and friends and family.  They believe in things like civic responsiblity, justice for all, providing support to infrastructure and promoting growth that doesn't edge people out of neighborhoods where they've set down roots. They believe in cultivating the arts and education, in science and libraries and technology and beauty.  People who want a good government, want the government to bring about good for and to people.   

The people who vote, want the world to be a safe and thriving place of freedom and opportunity, they don't agree about the how of it.  For our democracy to last, we will have to reach across the aisle in all things, and find where we can do the most good.  We will have to work with and for each other.  We also don't get to decide the government is always the solution or always the problem.     Either one is a simplifcation of the complex reality of an insitution that has served however faultily over the years.  The system works as well as the people who serve in it, so if we want it better, we'd better be better ourselves.   

How?  The voting is the beginning, not the end of our civic responsibility.  Join some part of what makes your community run, be a voice that speaks, be the hands that do the work, be the eyes that see the problems or the ears that hear the needs of the community.   Maybe explore if God is calling you to run for public office or help discuss within the parties the purpose of the parties themselves. It's not that it doesn't matter who wins, it's that what matters more is what we do going forward, irrespective of who gets to 270.