By Rev Dr Doe West
I sat down at my keyboard to type one more pre-election blog post for Engaging Peace, hoping to tip things on the fulcrum for anyone who is not yet determined to vote.
Instead, I cried. Soul deep tears.
My crying started as tears of anguish.
Then I realized how pathetic my anguish was as compared with the anguish of Tree of Life Synagogue members and their sympathizers, or the families of those two African Americans killed as secondary targets when the killer could not enter the Black church he originally targeted, or the members of all the disparaged groups at risk daily in this increasingly angry and violent country.
My anguished tears continued and feelings of fear intensified as I reflected on these and other recent assaults.
Then I looked into the eyes of the migrants and saw not fear but hope, not despair but determination, not hate for anyone but love for their children.
And then I asked myself what I could do, on my own, that was of worth.
That stopped my tears. I put my fingers back on the keyboard to send this message to you and hope that you will send it on to undecideds.
Put politics as you have generally thought of them totally aside.
This election should not be the same old politics. It should be about this country being one’s home, and one’s home being one’s sanctuary. We should not need to create sanctuary cities. The country should be the sanctuary for everyone seeking to escape violence and injustice, as promised in the words of many of its great leaders.
It’s time to revive and fulfill the country’s hundreds of years of promises and work to create in reality the ideal we call democracy. We need to continue to build and shape with our sweat and tears all that word signifies.
For whom? For you.
For one another.
For all generations to come.
One step you can take towards fulfilling democracy’s promise and potential is vote –so that on Nov 6th by midnight, we can shed the tears that encourage the soul.