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[While the Rev. Heather Christensen, the Interdependent Web’s resident curator, is on maternity leave, the Interdependent Web will feature a variety of guest bloggers. We are grateful to the Rev. Dr. J. Carl Gregg for filling in this week with a survey of responses to the U.S. presidential election. —Editors]
The day before the election, I posted about “Voting on the Side of Love”:
The Higher Ground Moral Declaration and these questions for “voting on the side of love” are ways to factor progressive religious values into our discernment of conscience and our democratic process. As The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his book The Strength to Love: “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”
In the wake of this election, these words seem even more relevant.
In “After the Election,” Lynn Ungar wrote:
I expect, like me, you feel as if you had gotten the news that a member of your family died suddenly in some bizarre accident. It feels unreal, and frightening and impossibly wrong. You wonder what you could have done to keep it from happening. You are furious at your loved one for doing something so reckless and stupid. You feel like the world as you knew it has turned upside down.
Also responding to the election results, David Breeden posted “A Republic If You Can Keep It”:
The story goes that a woman stopped Benjamin Franklin as he was leaving the last session of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. She asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” The key word there is “if.” Keeping it is still the question.
The Blue Boat blog of the UUA’s Youth and Young Adult Ministries asked “What do you need right now?” The post concludes with a quote from the Rev. Ashely Horan:
You are loved beyond belief. You are enough, you are precious, your work and your life matter, and you are not alone. You are part of a “we,” a great cloud of witnesses living and dead who have insisted that this beautiful, broken world of ours is a blessing worthy of both deep gratitude and fierce protection. Whatever happens tomorrow, our ancestors and our descendants are beckoning us, compelling us to onward toward greater connection, greater compassion, greater commitment to one another and to the earth. Together, we are resilient and resourceful enough to say “yes” to that call, to make it our life’s work in a thousand different ways, knowing that we can do no other than bind ourselves more tightly together, and throw ourselves into the holy work of showing up, again and again, to be part of building that world of which we dream but which we have not yet seen.
Mimi Ho reflected on “November 9: What I’ll Tell My Kids”:
Sitting here on the eve of the election I wonder how I am going to make meaning of the election results on Wednesday morning, for myself and my daughters who are 8 and 6 years old. They’ve been very upset about Trump’s predatory language and behavior towards women and girls and have asked me several times, “Are we are moving out of the country if he wins?”
Finally, Colin Bossen wrote “Let Us Dream Freedom Dreams”:
The first and most important comes from the recognition that we are far more powerful together than when we are alone. . . . If you are not already part of an organized group, join one. . . . Second, don’t give into despair. With despair comes immobility and inaction. What we need is action. Find something to give yourself a little hope. In far darker times than these people have dared to dream freedom dreams. Tomorrow, when all seems impossible, ask yourself what is your freedom dream? In it you will find a kernel of hope.