When I set out to start a website, blog, and podcast about politics and spirituality, never could I have guessed I would launch the website and blog during an impeachment inquiry. If we are to discuss politics here, it would be ridiculous and wrong to avoid a conversation about the most politically volatile events in the last 30+ years.
I hope you’ll join in the discussion, and reflect on it in your faith communities. Here are a few things I believe we should keep in mind as the process unfolds. It’s not an exhaustive list, and I’m certain I’ll add more ideas in the future. Maybe some of those ideas will come from you.
- Look for the truth. Everyone is claiming to speak the truth, and often the truth of one speaker is the exact opposite of the truth given by a different speaker. This isn’t new, of course, but in a social media age where the label “fake news” is thrown about many times a day, and where bald-faced lies are sometimes recounted as if they were truth, discernment takes a little more work. How do we look for the truth? As a starter we turn to trusted news sources. Even there, it’s our responsibility to read, watch, and to listen with a critical eye. Any source that is perfectly aligned with a party or particular politician should be highly suspect. That doesn’t mean that even those sources can’t speak truth; we just have to stop being lazy about receiving everything as truth, and about being uncritical. And we must call out leaders who attempt to shut down the truth, or who repeat lies. In the midst of untruth, we recommit ourselves to speaking truth, in love.
- Skip the glee. This one is particularly difficult for me. I have to admit that I find some degree of satisfaction when a policy or person with whom I profoundly disagree and who is, in my opinion, deeply flawed is finally expected to answer for misdeeds, lies, and harm done to others or to our political system. I am striving to limit my public responses to ones that are measured, as kind as possible, reasonable, and spiritual. I’m working on making my private conversations equally even, but that is a work in progress, and a determination I have to renew daily. We must all remember that every actor in this crazy current national narrative is a real person even if that person has done really bad things. That humanity is an essential part of our reaction. When we lessen the humanity of another person, we also lessen our own.
- Use our power. Together we have far more power than any one of us has alone. Not only should we be exercising our religious and spiritual power with meditation and prayer, we also must exercise our political power. Without the power of the people and the ballot box, those who represent us lose influence. Now is exactly the time to call and write our elected representatives. Again, this is something I find hard to do because my senators and my district’s representative are all wildly interested in retaining and improving their positions of power by supporting the current administration and all its policies. However, that should not keep me from making sure they know what I believe about current events. As a matter of fact, this is precisely the time when I should be speaking out the most – remembering, though, all that I wrote above in my first two points.
- Never forget those who are suffering most. When a horrendous decision withdraws our troops and support from the border between Syria and Turkey, we remember the Kurds who are caught in the middle. When policies separate families, or when the President requests cost estimates regarding moats filled with alligators and snakes, we remember the immigrant and the refugee. When officials enact guidelines that favor one race, we remember the non-white citizens and residents. When economic strategy values only the wealthy, we remember the poor. And when we remember, we act.
What happens next in the current administration is very much a question mark. So we listen and pay attention with open hearts, minds, and spirits. Let us not abandon who we are in the face of a crisis of leadership.
Let us hold on to the people and things that give us life even as we watch and wait and hope for a good outcome and a better future.
© Melissa Bane Sevier, 2019