Coming up on a week post election, the sun keeps setting and then rising yet again. There is much to be hopeful for along with moments that bring despair. A strong balance alternates with shaky ground.
In the midst of this, though, I still choose love and meditate on peace. I see the beauty in each of these days, not solely because the sky is gloriously blue and the sun continues to warm. Rather, I am lifted by what may be a groundswell, albeit faint, of a willingness to listen across ideology, religion, race, and gender identification.
If I emerge from 2016 with any greater appreciation, it is that my perception of the world is just that — mine; not right or better, just conclusions based on my life experience. We are nothing if not a country of many people deeply divided and troubled, yet also passionate about that which each of us perceives to be best and true.
Given that reality, I think, maybe if we work hard to understand each other better and the sources of our discontent, we can find more that binds than separates us.
Here, then, is my full disclosure:
I am a Jew, both second and third generation American. My mother's father fled Russia as a young boy, with his family, as Hitler was coming to power. His father was killed in a pogrom. If you know anything about me at all, it is that my children are the center of my universe — three daughters and a son; a son, who, because in this case it matters, is gay.The nauseating reality of a vicious, venomous hate unleashed on this United States of America feels — and is — intensely personal. The vile rhetoric spewed by the president elect and some of his supporters during his campaign fuel an unrelenting sadness. No, the people are not deplorable, but some of their actions and words were and continue to be exactly that. So, I will not go quietly, nor will I acquiesce just because of the voting outcome. My truth is that there are some things I cannot accept, and I will work to change them. I will speak up.
I get the concerns — lost jobs, immigration policies, liberal agendas, arrogant elitists — but what about the inherent right to safe passage? What some easily write off, others view as a direct and immediate threat. My daughters have the right not to be assaulted; my son, the right to live and love. I still hold childhood memories of seeing the ink number tattooed on a Holocaust survivor's arm.The consequence of this past year is that people like me and my family fear mightily the angry faction emboldened by what it interprets as a license to vomit hate and inflict harm. And because hate begets hate, the torrent flows both ways with retaliation in kind, epithets and name calling. Peaceful election protests are marred by violent acts. What never Trumpers found so despicable in Trump Nation, they now freely fire back, bolstered by the sense that their hate is noble and justified even though hate is hate. Round and round we go.
It is in this maelstrom that we face many challenges, but the overriding question to answer in every situation remains: What is the loving choice?
There is no in-between, there are no other options. We can cloak ourselves in the sanctimonious justification of ideals and beliefs. Or, stand together. All skin colors, all religions, all genders, all classes, all political beliefs, all those yearning only for and deserving of equal rights. We can get on the right side of history. Or not. We can fight for the greater good. Or, turn a cold shoulder.
The choice has never been clearer. Love wholly and unconditionally or abandon humanity. The potential exists to go either way. Holocaust survivor Viktor E. Frankl chronicled his experience as an inmate at the Auschwitz concentration camp in his 1946 book, Man's Search for Meaning. He wrote:
“Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.”
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