The Morning After

I’m wondering if years from now we may all look back and recall, “I know exactly where I was when I found out that Donald Trump was elected President of the United States.” It feels like a watershed moment in history, regardless of one’s political affiliation.

To friends and family members celebrating victory today, I hope we can continue to love and support each other even as we respectfully agree to disagree on policies and ideologies. We have weathered this storm before. Hopefully, we will do so again moving forward, come what may.

To those who are grieving for themselves and/or for their loved ones, I would invite us all to lean into each other at this time. We may need to name and honor the stages of loss that we are experiencing right now, including denial, anger, and even some depression. We need to feel whatever we are feeling without rushing too quickly into an attempt at acceptance and resignation.

Personally, after the Facebook frenzy of the last several months, I found myself needing to slow down this morning and to limit my interaction on social media. I needed to press the “pause” button on my spirit in order to breathe. I desperately wanted to take a “time out” or ask for a “do over” or just stay in bed for the day in order to process mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. But the words of a poem came drifting into my consciousness:

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”………..
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

from The Invitation by Oriah

I found myself deeply grateful to remember that we are in the midst of Hunger and Homelessness Awareness week. I remembered the students who have been sleeping outside all week and those who made breakfast at the Salvation Army on Monday morning.  I felt admiration for those who participated in the Poverty Simulation Monday night and gave thanks that the media covered their efforts. (Link) I look forward to the many volunteers who will show up to provide a meal to neighbors in need at Park View Mission tonight and to all who will view the movie “Out of Mind” Thursday night in order to learn more about efforts to address homelessness in our own community.

My hope and my prayer is that all of us, Republican, Democratic, Independent, or other, channel our best energies right now into positive actions on behalf of those in need. Surely we can agree on that much, remembering the words of Catholic activist Dorothy Day:

“People say, what is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.”

Peace, Anne