Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

kindness

What do we do now?

The morning after the election, I’m tired for a lot of reasons, although while watching the results roll in on Election Night, I could honestly say I was less anxious than at the same time two years prior. So many of the 2018 election results gave me hope.

But I’m sitting with some serious disappointment about our local race for the U.S. House seat. Fear-based politics won again and I had such hope that the vision presented by the challenger would be enough to draw people out of their political strongholds. I can’t say for sure that people vote out of fear but I know that fear drives more decisions than it should and sometimes how a person votes is one of those decisions.

Photo by Parker Johnson via Unsplash

The day after an election, no matter the outcome but particularly when it doesn’t go the way I hoped, leaves me asking the question, “Now what?” I have come to understand, especially in the last two years, that whatever happens at the government level does not absolve me from responsibility in my own life and community. No matter who is in office, I still have obligations.

I confess that I have not been as engaged publicly in justice and advocacy in the last year as I was right after the 2016 election. I feel like my part-time day job has elements of both justice and advocacy and is a good use of my time. Still, I cannot leave everything completely to others.

What now?

Maybe you’re asking yourself the same question. And if you aren’t, that’s okay, too. Maybe you can’t think about it right now. Maybe you don’t see any need to concern yourself further with politics. I’m not here to tell you what to do.

But I will invite you to participate in what I feel is the best way forward. At least, it is for me.

Now that the election is over, here is what I plan to do:

1. Reinstate spiritual practices into my life. I have a complicated relationship with church and Christians sometimes, but I could never give up on Jesus. For me, if I am to do the work I feel is required of me as a human, I need to be connected to a Source that is unlimited and beyond me. That Source for me is Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The first thing I thought of when I was considering this question of “what now?” was the phrase “against such things there is no law.” I looked it up to be sure I knew where it was found in the Bible, and it follows the listing of the fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

The fruit of the Spirit cannot be cherry-picked or forced. It is a result of deep connection and being tended by the Gardener. There is no law against love, joy, peace, kindness, etc., and if I want those to be words that describe my life, attributes that flow out of me naturally, then I need to start with the Spirit.

2. Regularly contact my elected officials. I was in the habit of doing this after the 2016 election. For the first time in my life, I made phone calls to my representatives and sent emails and tweeted at them (to them?) a lot. Then I sort of stopped. I think in part I was discouraged. I’m not good at repetition without result, and I’m deeply averse to conflict so calling to make my dissenting voice heard felt like constant conflict.

But that’s no excuse. There are email options. And I can call from time to time. I need to use my voice to defend the values I’m passionate about. On the morning of the election, I read in the Book of Common Prayer, a prayer for an election, and it begins with “Almighty God, to whom we must account for all our powers and privileges …”

In the last two years, I have become more aware of the powers and privileges I have as a white woman living in the United States. I must give an account to God for what I did with that power and privilege and it is my desire to use it on behalf of those who have none or less. In Proverbs 31, before the wife of noble character is introduced, are these words: “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.”

I need to speak up more.

3. Listen and learn. When I’m not speaking up, I need to be listening and learning from those who have different life experiences, different heritages, different points of view than I have.  This includes reading, of course, which is not hard to do but also in-person listening and learning whenever possible.

Photo by Sandrachile via Unsplash

4. Scatter kindness. Related to no. 1, when I am rooted in the practices of my faith tradition, kindness and love toward others overflow. I’m not a naturally optimistic or bubbly person but I find that I can’t keep these things–kindness and love–to myself when I am full in my spirit. I hold doors open and smile and talk to strangers. I give compliments away like candy at a parade, and I’m more free with charitable giving. (I love that Lancaster’s Extra Give is only 10 days after the election. Giving money to organizations I support and watching the amount given overall in one day is healing work when I think the world is hopeless.) I write letters and thank you notes and check in on friends. These may be small acts but they are just as necessary as the big ones. Maybe more so.

Photo by Nathan Lemon on Unsplash

5. Pay attention. Some of us (myself included) are glued to our screens for news and analysis and entertainment. There is a place for all of this, but we can’t forget that there is an IRL (in-real-life) world around us. Every day there are people passing through our sphere. Every day there are needs and chances to do good. Yesterday, I missed a chance to help a woman whose first language wasn’t English fill out a medical form at the dentist. I didn’t want to offend her, even though she looked like she needed help. I didn’t want to make a scene in the waiting room. (I always have excuses.) Seeing the needs and chances to help are just one part of the equation. Acting on them is another.

What would you add to this list? How do you move forward when you are disappointed and frustrated with election results? What is next for you?

And if you aren’t disappointed and frustrated with election results, what does the work ahead look like for you?

Stolen {A series of S-words, Part 2}

I know I promised you a post on silence next in this series but things happen.

Like bicycles getting stolen.

If you’re following along, this would be incident #2 of a stolen bicycle. You can read all about the first one here.

This time around, it was our daughter’s bike that was taken, and while I’m less surprised that it happened, I’m still upset.

So angry, in fact, I wanted to give the world a big middle finger the day it happened. (I don’t mean to offend, but that was my honest feeling.)

A text from my husband alerted us to the missing bicycle, so our Friday morning, which had been going smoothly was thrown off-kilter. We searched the porch. I called in a police report. (“Yes, that was also us who reported a bicycle missing a month ago, thank you.) We dressed and took a walk up the road just to see if we could see any evidence of her bicycle in the general vicinity where my bike was found.

While waiting for my son to shower, I sat at the dining room table, choking down coffee, feeling like the world is a cruel place. Never mind that our president is threatening a nuclear war with North Korea. I was saddened by the feeling that we aren’t safe in our neighborhood, the one little corner of the world where we spend our daily life.

Our plan to ride the bus into the city and go to the library was delayed. When we finally headed out, it was an hour later than originally planned. And now we’d be eating lunch out.

At times like this, I want to curl up and hide out and cut off everyone and everything so there is no.more.hurt. My daughter, brave and strong thing that she is, has taken the news mostly with grace. She has not shed a tear, only asked if she has to use her birthday money to fix it when it comes back broken. Bless.

My anger does not surface often but when it does, look out. Just as quickly as my anger flares, though, tenderness invades. I want to be mad at the world and take my anger out on no one and everyone, but the only cure for my feelings is to stay open. To look for the good. To notice and see. To hold onto kindness when I’m on the receiving end of it.

Photo by Hanny Naibaho on Unsplash

The dispatcher groaned when I told her this was the second bike we had stolen in a month. The police officer said he was sorry this had happened again to us. They don’t have to show us kindness in the midst of their jobs but they did.

A bike was stolen. It is important. But there are more important things to protect.

—

The world tried to break me as we traveled into the city.

We sat on the bus listening to a mom in the back row tell her young child over and over again to “Stop!” He had already pulled the cord to signal the bus to stop even though they weren’t stopping, and she was irritated. My mind was still full of the black thoughts from our morning discovery, but I tried to get to a happier place. I have been that mom. I am that mom.

“That’s a college, too,” she said to the boy as we passed the school of technology. We had already been through the community college. “That’s the college Mommy was going to go to.” Just a hint of sadness in her voice.

My thoughts turned immediately to my own mother, who gave up college when she learned she was pregnant with me. I have no evidence that this mom abandoned college for the same reasons, but I wondered.

A few blocks later, we passed the county prison which is unimpressive on the back side but looks like a castle from the front.

“Your uncle is in there,” the woman said. I can only assume the boy waved because he said he could see his uncle. His mom explained that his uncle can’t see him, and the weight of these circumstances is heavy in my heart.

Sadness settles in and it’s all I can feel and see. As we drive through the city, I think of my uncle, a bus driver, who died too soon. I notice all the people sitting on their porches smoking in the middle of the day. What are they feeling? Have they lost hope?

The world is broken. And it is breaking me.

This is one thing a bike thief can’t take from me. Stealing from us only increases my awareness of the hurt of others. When I feel pain, I feel others’ pain, too. Suffering of any kind, as much as I don’t want it to happen, helps me see more clearly.

—

Later, we go to Target and are maybe the only family who is not shopping for school supplies. I am speaking in unkind tones to my children who are bouncing through the aisles and sharing eleventy-billion thoughts, including “Whoa. That guy’s beard is cool.”

I don’t even look because we live in a town with a lot of beards. Also, I have a husband with a beard, and I’m not in the mood to be impressed. But they keep.bringing.it.up. I’m just trying to get through Target without spending all our money or losing my s*** so we can pick up my husband from work and go home to eat BLTs for dinner. (Bacon, apparently, is a comfort food.)

We stand in line at the checkout and then I see it. The beard. It’s striped. Orange and black. And it’s on a Target employee. He leans toward our aisle to restock some snacks and I see the full picture: orange and black beard, significant nose ring.

“My kids like your beard,” I say because I feel like I have to say something if I’m staring.

“Thanks,” he says. “I’m rather fond of it, too.”

It feels small, this acknowledgement of another’s humanity, especially when it looks different than my own, but it was big enough to crack the darkness a little more.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

I’m not always good at this getting outside of my head thing, so I felt good that this was another thing the bike incident didn’t take from me. I can still offer kind words and a smile to someone else.

On our way back into the city, while stopped in traffic, there was a woman sitting in the median with a sign I could not read. My first thought was “Crap, I don’t have any cash or extra food.” We had just been to Target, of course, but what we had were groceries, not food we could easily give away. She was feet from a grocery store but we were running behind. My intentions are almost always better than my actions in these situations, and as we passed, I read that she was asking for shoes. The only shoes I had were the ones on my feet and they aren’t in that great of condition.

I glanced in the mirror as we drove away and saw another car pull up next to her and hand her something of significant size out the window. I want to believe it was shoes. Or a hot meal. It definitely wasn’t cash.

Witnessing the act softened my heart even more because sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one feeling anything at all for people on the street. I watch more people walk by than stop, and I myself walk by more often than I stop. So, to see someone else do something good encourages me that making a difference, changing the world, showing kindness, is not all on just one of us. It’s on all of us.

This thievery makes me suspicious of the people I see in my neighborhood but seeing strangers do nice things, talking to new people at Target, this reminds me that the human connection is strong and it takes work to keep it that way.

It is much harder to take a step toward knowing someone than it is to judge them from afar. It is harder to show kindness, to want to understand the motives behind an action, than to decide a person’s guilt on the spot.

I want to do the hard things. (Okay, I mostly want to do hard things. I also want to watch Netflix and forget about life for a while.) I even have this wild idea to invite the thieves over for dinner so we can know them better. They have not stolen my hope for a better way to life.

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

—

A final few words.

“Stolen” doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. We talk about our hearts being stolen by a lover or a child. We say things like “let’s steal away to the beach for a day” and it’s a glorious feeling of freedom. Or if we find a good deal on something, it’s a “steal” and we pat ourselves on the back.

Things, people–they might be taken from us by some person or circumstance, but only we can decide what will ultimately be stolen in the process.

Will a bicycle theft also steal my joy for life? Will it steal my hope that we might move to the city and live in closer proximity to people who might take things from us? Will it steal my compassion?

Or will my heart be stolen by a better, harder way of life?