Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

Trusting that All Will Be Well

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Demonstrators in front of US Capitol (Dec. 2012)

Demonstrators in front of US Capitol (Dec. 2012)

This week has been hard.

Taking a brief 3-day cruise that began last Sunday, we were at sea and “off the grid” for the final days of the recent election. I did not sleep Tuesday evening, tossing and turning and praying all night. By 6 am we had arrived within sight of Port Everglades and cellular service was returning. While following my morning routine of going to the Deck 5 coffee shop, I was able to get a ful cellular signal. I opened the Washington Post app on my phone and saw the words, “Trump Triumphs.” I felt ill; I sat down for a few moments in the empty lounge I was passing through. I returned to our stateroom (sans cappucino) to share the news with my partner. I don’t think I’m revealing too much when I say that we cried. It remains unfathomable to me how anyone — including some family and friends — could have voted for a man who seems to be without moral compass and whose campaign brought out the worst in the human spirit. This Huffington Post commentary expresses what I and so many millions of Americans are feeling. As commentator Jennifer Sullivan writes, “The entire Trump/Pence ticket’s platform revolves around making other individuals be made to feel less than. It is divisive. It is harmful. And it stands in stark opposition to every ideal this country was founded upon.”  For me, the enduring feeling — as someone on Facebook stated — is as if my neighbors, my family, my friends voted against me.

It Is What It Is

One of the essential elements of mental and spiritual health is the ability to live in reality. And so I recognize and accept what is. Tuesday cannot be undone. Our quirky Electoral College system that allows someone who came in 2nd to be named the winner cannot be retroactively changed. One hundred million voters who decided their vote didn’t count cannot now cast their ballots and have their voices heard, too.

The only option we have is to move forward, reminding ourselves daily of the values we hold most dear and how those values impact our daily lives and daily choices. Like the demonstrators above who were not afraid to demonstrate for peace on the grounds of the US Capitol, we too must find ways of ensuring that our voices are heard in the public square — whenever and however we can.

julian-of-norwichAgain, this has been a tough week. But I took comfort this morning from this passage in Richard Rohr’s Everything Belongs (p. 132).

“Again I quote beloved Julian of Norwich in her famous thirteenth Showing. ‘In fear and trembling,’ she asked Jesus, ‘O good Lord, how can all be well when great harm has come to your creatures through sin? And here I wanted, if I dared, to have some clearer explanation to put my mind at rest.’ And he said, ‘Since I have brought good out of the worst-ever evil, I want you to know by this; that I shall bring good out of all the lesser evils, too.'”

Or, as Julian is famously quoted:  “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”

 

The Right Side of Salvation History

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20111208-110105.jpgDuring her recent and much acclaimed speech in Geneva, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton challenged the world to live up to the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recognize the inherent dignity of LGBT people around the globe. In doing so, she shared with her UN colleagues that human rights advocates in the US often call upon political and other leaders to be “on the right side of history” and remember that no good has ever been achieved by a contraction of the rights individuals enjoy in civil society. On the contrary, history bears out that it is only through an expansion of rights to groups previously excluded has progress been made in advancing the goals of equality and justice the 1951 Declaration espouses. Inclusion, not exclusion, has always been the path of progress.

A similar challenge can and should be made to Christian leaders who cite biblical passages out of context or institutional “teachings” limited by time and culture when they take positions against the civil and religious rights of God’s LGBT children. Just as it is possible to be on the wrong side of history, so too it is possible to be on the wrong side of Salvation History.

Generally speaking, the notion of Salvation History rests in the fundamentally Christian belief that God is active in our world. It recognizes the Mystery of the Incarnation in the concrete and sees the Hand of God not as some divine puppeteer pulling the strings in our daily lives, but rather as the presence of the Spirit Whose ways are simultaneously known and unknown, manifest and hidden. We don’t always know what is of God and what is not, but we believe that God is present and at work in all creation.

For those who do believe that every human person is a reflection of the Divine; for we who struggle each day to allow that image and likeness of God within us to be seen more clearly, despite our faults and failings which all too often dull the brightness of that beautiful image, how can we make sense of such labels as “objectively disordered” and other terms describing gay and lesbian people as somehow “less than” their straight sisters and brothers?

The simple, truthful answer is we can’t. The Truth that all people reflect the Image of God and the “teachings” about homosexuality put forth by many Christian communities, including my own Catholic Church, are simply irreconcilable. One perspective will be on the right side of Salvation History, and one will not. I’m putting my nickel on the Truth.