From the Rector

 My dear family in Christ,
 
It’s a hard day, I must confess, to be trying to compose my bi-weekly message to the parish.  This election cycle just concluded has been particularly brutal for many of us ~ mentally, emotionally, spiritually ~ myself definitely included.  I’m old enough to have lived through many presidential elections now, but it’s difficult to recall one which truly seemed to play out along the lines of a cosmic contest of powerful primal forces, the way this one has felt. 
 
Regardless of where you locate yourself on the American political spectrum (or whether you do), the deep dividedness of our society, the differences that have less to do with particular policy positions and more to do with existential (and irreconcilable) worldviews and values has left so many of us feeling beaten, broken, hopeless.
 
Some folks are no doubt happy about the results of the election.  Others are surely relieved that it’s “over.”  Of course, for folks in vulnerable populations ~ women, people of color, LGBTQAI+ folx, non-Christians of all varieties, immigrants, it’s hardly over.  In many ways, it’s just beginning … or beginning again. 
 
Established rights and protections under the law are no longer necessarily secure, with the change in national leadership and the different set of values and priorities coming with that change.  The domestic and international order of the past four years is now much more uncertain than it was a few hours ago. 
 
As a result, it may well feel as if we awoke this morning in a very different world than the one in which we fell asleep last night.  It may feel like reality has fundamentally shifted underneath our feet.
 
The good news, and the bad news, is that this is not so.
 
The world that stands revealed today is in fact the same world that was real yesterday, and the day before, and the day before.  All that has changed is that it now stands revealed.  What I mean by that is that the majority of citizens ~ the ones who carried the day in the election ~ did not just magically appear in our midst overnight.  They’ve been here all along.  The reality we woke up to today is the same reality that existed yesterday. 
 
The difference is that, today, we are less able to pretend otherwise.  We are less able to hold the notion that most Americans, when presented with a clear choice, would embrace the fundamental values of empathy, compassion, respect for human dignity and the value of human life, and reject the path of rage, hate, dehumanization, demonization, violence, apathy, and a deeply callous inhumanity.  The people have spoken, and that illusion is gone.  But it was in fact an illusion.  The reality underlying it has not changed.
 
Make no mistake:  the effect may be no less devastating, no less a gut-punch, for the realization that the only real difference is that we see more clearly now than we did before.  It is no less appropriate, no less justified, to grieve and grieve deeply.  For even the loss of an illusion is still a loss.
 
Be as kind and gentle with yourselves as you can, through this harsh awakening.  It’s okay not to be okay.  It’s okay to need time to reel, to lament, even to rage against what shouldn’t be.
 
But let us covenant with ourselves, our God, and each other not to stay in that state for too long.  Because the truth is we have not so much lost the things we feel like we’ve lost, but rather have been shown that those things we treasure have not really yet been achieved.
 
We don’t live in the world that we thought we lived in.  Grieve at this discovery, this revelation, yes.  But we must hold fast to that vision of the peaceable kingdom, because that vision is still true.  Compassion is still true.  Justice is still true.  Truth is still true.  Love is still true.
 
We stand this morning in the midst of a stark, nigh crushing revelation about the state of things.
 
But we do not stand alone, and this story is not yet over.
 
You are all in my prayers.  If you need to talk, please reach out to me:  920-266-9262.  Many, many people are struggling deeply today, and many of us feel like we have lost any lingering thread that remained of something we might call “faith.”  If that’s where you are, please know that you are not alone!  Many, many people are right there, right now.  Even pastors and priests.  It is Golgotha, the place of the skull, where light and love and even hope itself hang bloodied and murdered upon the cross at the hands of brutal empire.  Many people are feeling exactly what you're feeling, and it is a deeply Christian feeling, for what that's worth.  The darkest of Black Fridays.
 
The folks who were there on Black Friday two millennia ago could hardly have believed that Sunday was going to be the first Easter.
 
All we can do in the darkness is hold fast to each other and try to remember Whose we are, yesterday, today, and always.
 
God bless you all.  You are in my prayers.
 
C+

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