Matters of Church and State

IN SEARCH OF PERSPECTIVE AND BALANCE

During the bitterly contested Presidential campaign, I surprised myself -- a self-confessed rabid partisan -- at how unusually hot my political passions ran.  To the point that I couldn’t sleep some nights for worrying about the outcome.  Now that the election is over, and my passions have subsided a notch or two, I am searching for a better, more balanced understanding of those on the other end of the political spectrum.

To this end, long-time friend Mike McKeown has recommended a book titled AMERICAN NATIONS: A History of the Eleven Regional Cultures of North America. According to a summary, its author Colin Woodward claims that “North America is actually made up of eleven nations, each with its own historical roots dating back centuries…. And each region continues to uphold its distinguishing ideals today.”  The book is sitting here before just waiting to be read.

Meantime, these quotes from a recent Washington Post opinion piece (“The America that Ben Franklin Saw”) by Walter Isaacson provided me some badly needed interim perspective.  I plan to read them over and over.  I share them with you because they also seem especially appropriate for the coming holiday noted for promoting feeling of peace on earth, good will towards all our fellow men and women.

“One of the glories of America is that there are two strands in its national character,” writes Isaacson.  “One is that of the liberty-loving individualist who flies a flag proclaiming, ‘Don’t tread on me.’  The other is that of the civic-minded citizen who sees our nation’s progress as a common endeavor.

“Tocqueville wrote that these strands were often in conflict, as they seemed to be in many of this year’s elections. But Franklin realized that these strands were interwoven and related, part of the warp and woof of the tightly knit American fabric.”

          “Over the years, America has been pretty good at regaining its balance,” Isaacson writes.  “After election seasons such as the one past… it’s therapeutic to gaze back through history’s haze and catch the eye of Franklin, the Founding Father who winks at us. The twinkle behind his bifocals reassures us that things will turn out all right….”

In that same spirit of hopefulness characteristic of the season, these words from Margaret J. Wheatley’s TURNING TO ONE ANOTHER.  Wheatley is one of those authors I often turn to when I need a bracing dose of wisdom.  Her work, LEADERSHIP AND THE NEW SCIENCE, was one of the best books I ever read on leadership and TURNING TO ONE ANOTHER one of the best on communications.

Wheatley writes:  “In this turbulent time, we crave connection; we long for peace; we want the means to walk through the chaos intact.  We are seeking things that are only available through an experience of sacred.  We can’t experience sacred in isolation.  It is always an experience of connecting.  The connection moves us outside ourselves into something greater.  [These sacred experiences] give us what we need to live in this strange yet wondrous time….

“Sacred experiences always offer gentle reassurance that everything is all right, just as it is…. The peace we seek is found in experiencing ourselves as part of something bigger and wiser than our little, crazed self.  The community we belong to is all of life…  We invite these [sacred] moments when we open to life and to each other.  In those grace-filled moments of greeting, we know we’re part of all this, and it’s all right.”

Gerald E. Lavey