Bridging Vast Divides
Photo by Myra, Grand Canyon, AZ, November 2019
This newsletter is a particularly challenging one to write. Although it will show up in your inbox in the wee hours of Friday morning, I need to finalize it by 9:00 AM today—the Wednesday after Election Day, with so much still up in the air. Everything may be settled by the time you read this, or our country may have entered into an even more contentious time. Either way, right at this moment, I am feeling stunned, anxious, and confused.
Pondering what my wise father might say if he were alive right now, I feel certain that he wouldn’t focus on the particularities of this specific election or on the qualities of our two very different presidential candidates. To him, the vast divides in our country would simply be proof of how humans are actually all so much the same—born innocent, but with minds that can be conditioned to believe anything at all. He would view this time as a perfect example of how we each see a different world, determined by our projections.
My father often thought about what he would have been like if he’d been born a German in pre-WWII Germany rather than being a Hasidic Jew in Poland. “Are all of us essentially the same?” he wondered. “Would I have behaved as brutally as my German prison guards if I were in their shoes?” Despite enduring a lifetime of violent antisemitism before suffering three years of abuse as a starved slave laborer in Nazi concentration camps, he asserted that there are no bad people, only bad ideas.
Throughout his life, my father witnessed how a threat to our beliefs can feel like a threat to our very lives, and that people are often willing to go into battle to defend those beliefs. He wrote, “We members of the human race are constantly fighting and inflicting the miseries of war upon one another. Today, we’re in danger of destroying our planet. Nothing can explain the horrors of human existence as much as our automatic, mechanical, and repetitive thinking, feeling, and acting.”
Right now, the divisions in our country feel more highly charged than I can ever remember. Although I have strong opinions about which candidate will bring more honesty, wisdom, selfless devotion, and competency to the White House, I worry about how we can possibly thrive as a country if we don’t learn how to bridge our vast divides.
The past four years have proven that our votes and elected officials have a huge impact on the quality of our lives, and dramatically impact our future and the future of our children and grandchildren. Nonetheless, I want to remember that our society is made up of millions of individuals. No matter who is guiding our government, it’s important that I stay personally committed to embodying the qualities I want to see manifested in the world.
As His Holiness the Dalai Lama said, “Many people today agree that we need to reduce violence in our society. If we are truly serious about this, we must deal with the roots of violence, particularly those that exist within each of us. We need to embrace ‘inner disarmament,’ reducing our own emotions of suspicion, hatred and hostility toward our brothers and sisters.” He also said, “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.”
Today, Maria Shriver wrote in a special midweek edition of her Sunday Paper, “We’ve all got to do our part. We’ve all got to bend, listen, stay open, and stay the course. Because if we don’t each do our parts to work toward unity, understanding, and healing, we will descend into darkness, anger, and hate. We will become what we say we are not. We will inhabit our worst selves.”
Maria also shared a beautiful prayer for this time that I want to pass on to you. It was written by Pat Bergen from the Sisters of St. Joseph whose mission is to foster “unity that is not uniformity and diversity that is not divisive.”
Dear God, May today be Day One of a new unity in the US, with former divisions freshly healed by humility, wisdom, charity, grace, and forgiveness. Healer of our every ill, breathe in and among all of us who dwell on this land. Soothe our wounds. Calm our fears. Mend our divisions. Hope of all tomorrows, open our deaf ears and fill us with compassion. Tender our hearts. Inspire creative ideas to address the cries of our sisters, brothers, and Earth itself. Send forth your Spirit of Love and Unity. Transform pointed fingers of blame into hands open in reverence to receive one another. Fan into flame the gift of our founding and let us be known again as a people united for the goodness, justice and peace of all people forever. Amen.
