For Wilshire Baptist Church
I wrote the following words on Election Day 2010 for my personal blog before I started writing for Wilshire.
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Today I exercised my right to vote in a very literal way: I walked the three-mile round-trip to the poll and back. Interesting what you can see from that vantage point: Well-maintained streets and car-crippling potholes. Beautifully landscaped lawns and ugly weed patches. Single-family homes, duplexes and apartments. Nice cars and dented hulks. Banners for Cowboys, Redskins, Longhorns and Sooners. Stray dogs and prissy window barkers. Young mothers with strollers and seniors with walkers. All of that and more in one voting precinct.
We do not live in a homogenous, lockstep, one-size-fits-all society. The diversity in my precinct is just a taste of what is true in my city, county, state and nation. Our problems and needs are diverse, and so are our hopes and dreams. That means our elected leaders must be attentive, resourceful, cooperative and innovative. They need to shout less at each other and listen more to us. They need to know when we need their help, and know when we want to be left alone. The candidates that filled our mailboxes with flyers now need to walk our neighborhoods and see life from our perspective.
Above all else, they need to be honest with us and with each other. They don’t need to tell us they’re going to do something if they know they can’t. We’re smarter than they realize, and more understanding than they can imagine. We know that not everything can be fixed.
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Today I walked to the poll again, but in a different community. It was less than a mile roundtrip, and while the view is different, so too is my perspective. Ten years ago I wagged my finger at the politicians, but today I’m compelled to turn that finger on you and me. I don’t blame the politicians so much anymore for what’s wrong in our world. Our noise has emboldened their noise; our intolerance, their intolerance; our distrust, their distrust. We are them and they are us. We elect what we have become, and we become what we elect.
Most of you probably have already voted by the time you read this – there was just one other person at my precinct at noon – but this isn’t about voting. It’s about who we are and what we do after the polls close and the votes are counted. It’s about what we’ve forgotten: We’ve forgotten how to be civil. We’ve forgotten how to be patient. We’ve forgotten how to be trusting. We’ve forgotten how to be generous with each other. We’ve forgotten how to listen to each other. We’ve forgotten how to see each other. We’ve forgotten how to love unconditionally.
Some have called this the most critical election in our lifetime. I believe our reaction is even more critical. My prayer today is that no matter who we voted for, and no matter who is elected, that we dig down deep and try to remember and regain those things that we have forgotten how to do. I know we can’t do that on our own, because we are flawed. But we all were created in the image of a gracious and loving God, and that should be reason for hope. Grace and love for each other is a good place to start.