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From the Pastor
At Cabo San Lucas, at the very tip of Baja California, you can see the waters of the Gulf of California mingle with the waters of the Pacific Ocean. The two are distinguished by an obvious color gradient, which gradually disappears as you look beyond the peninsula.
As I contemplate Tuesday’s election, it seems to me that the two waters are anxiety and sadness. No matter what news we wake up to on Nov. 6, this election cycle has only heightened our sense that an unbridgeable chasm separates us all. We are not “these United States.” It feels like the sky is falling. And we don’t know how to fix it.
Pastor Wes Granberg-Michaelson has some words of wisdom as we approach the day:
"Our temptation is to begin with politics and then try to figure out how religion can fit in. We start with the accepted parameters of political debate and, whether we find ourselves on the left or the right, we use religion to justify and bolster our existing commitments.
". . . But what if we make the inward journey our starting point? What if we recognize that our engagement in politics should be rooted in our participation in the Trinitarian flow of God’s love? Then everything changes. We are no longer guided or constrained by what we think is politically possible [emphasis added], but are compelled by what we know is most real. At the heart of all creation, the mutual love within the Trinity overflows to embrace all of life. We are invited to participate in the transforming power of this love. There we discover the ground of our being, centering all our life and action." (The whole essay is available in the Politics and Religion issue of Oneing, available here.)
I do not want to minimize what is at stake in the election, nor the material consequences its outcome will have, both locally and globally. But we can remember that God has continued to abide with God’s people through every disaster and every tyrant’s reign. God’s love continues to permeate the universe, and we are invited to participate in the transforming power of this love.
As the waters of the Gulf of California flow out into the Pacific, as the Atlantic Ocean sweeps into the Pacific at the southernmost tip of Chile, as every sea and ocean eventually merge, so our emotional states, our political fortunes, and our lives are held in the great ocean of God’s being.
In the words of Julian of Norwich: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. Amen.
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