The Untold Goodness Before Election Day
Heading into Election Day, the polls in my state were looking dicey. Though not because of unsavory actors.
At issue was a concern that there would be too many veterans for voting access, loving chaplains, trained election observers that voters might be discouraged by the large, jolly corridor of folks they had to walk through to get to the polling entrance.
It was evidence of the American story in redemption. Not only this singular display of Election Day neighborliness. But because this democracy caretaking did not, could not spontaneously emerge on November 3rd. Care does not sprout up out of nowhere.
Long before Election Day, I knew of a laundromat offering free community laundry day, even after their rent got jacked up.
There was a bishop who discarded the desire to be liked and risked speaking truth to powerful politicians who sat (ever more uncomfortably) in her pews.
Parents who loaded their vans up with kids whose parents couldn’t safely pick them up and drove them home.
Residents at an assisted living facility outside on a raw February day with their wheelchairs and walkers holding signs up to the oncoming traffic that said, “HONK FOR PEACE."
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The rub is that all these people holding each other up happens quietly while the loud, tearing-each-other-down stuff gets covered from every possible angle. So we can fall into the trap of believing that it’s a dog eat dog world, you gotta watch your back, people are in it for themselves and little else.
But on Election Day, this fierce and quiet care for the world spilled out into the open. And you couldn’t overlook it because it was so apparent, so heartbreakingly beautiful, it could - as Mother Teresa put it - break your heart right open so the whole world would fall in.
All turned out to be quiet at the polls in my state. Which reminds me of how an educator I met in Northern Ireland said to never take peace for granted just because it’s quieter than violence.
And perhaps the same is true for care. It is often quieter than hate. But rarely less powerful.
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