Lyrics: O beautiful for spacious skies/ For amber waves of grain/ For purple mountains majesty/ Above the fruited plains.
“I’ve been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.” Abraham Lincoln
I’m with you, Abe, only my elderly knees tell me to find another way. So, post-election, I bowed my head along with the minister and congregation while sitting down and found healing in the minister’s heartfelt and eloquent talk that addressed the collective grief we were feeling. At the conclusion, the previously subdued congregation was moved to rise spontaneously in a standing ovation. An emotional experience not to be forgotten.
Author, spiritual teacher, and visionary, Caroline Myss, compares the election to Dorothy pulling back the curtain and exposing the Wizard of Oz, in this case, as a fraud, bigot, racist, misogynist, and pathological liar, and a country willing to give control to a narcissistic TV reality star.
The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah who hails from South Africa compares Trump to the corrupt leader (Zuma) of that country with his nepotism and efforts to control the media. One of Hitler’s first moves was to take control of the media.
With the selection of a white supremacist, Steve Bannon, as Trump’s chief strategist, our elected Wizard is not even pretending to hide behind the curtain; he’s flaunting his power, puffed up like a NFL team after scoring the winning touchdown. Bannon is against anyone not male and white; not just the Muslims, but Jews, Asians, Mexicans, Blacks, and women. Will the disabled be next as Trump demonstrated when mocking a disabled person at one of his rallies, waving his arms around in the air and making faces. Hitler went after the disabled. Teacher and visionary, Sandra Ingerman, writes that “The shadow side of our culture is now exposed on many levels.” She tells us that “the shadow has to come up to be acknowledged and healed.”
So, we see protestors in the streets all around the country. Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister writes that “Jesus left to all of us the obligation to speak up on issues that threaten to erode our humanity.” For reasons associated with age, I will not be marching in the streets. Scottish author and spiritual activist, Alastair McIntosh, talks about two different approaches to activism. One is with a shovel, scooping up society’s waste and filling the dump trucks. The other is with a teaspoon, one spoonful at a time. The latter may take longer but with enough teaspoons we can move mountains.
America’s shadow is very dark. Let’s make that a heaping teaspoon of love and compassion.
Lyrics: America, America/ God shed his grace on thee/ And crown thy good with brotherhood/From sea to shining sea! (Lyric by Katharine Lee Bates; music by Samuel A. Ward.)
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Yes, this post election “organizing” of recruiting appropriate politicians must look even more like a game to those not living in our country, and who look at our political environment with disdain. A NYT article called “The Man who would Not be President” parallels my thoughts when it wrote that when Trump put his hat in the ring, it was first a game to him. Then it became an ego trip, and now results in certain people thinking of him as a ‘god’. It’s all very disturbing. We’ll just have to breathe deeply and hope we can survive the bumpy four years ahead of us.