Prologue: I have been trying to put some words together about life right now. I am not sure I make a clear point but am going to press publish anyway. And, warning, this is not an optimistic post but a culmination of a week of observation and rumination as I figure out how to move forward.
Yesterday, the Universe played one of her pranks: I had to attend church. I have joined a handbell choir that practices at a nearby United Methodist Church, and we were part of the service. The choir itself is ecumenical so there is no expectation of joining the church, and no one has asked me to attend even as they are welcoming and grateful for my participation. I love playing handbells, an activity that requires other people. And since it usually happens within some religious connection, it means going to church.
My home denomination is United Methodist so the order of service was very comfortable although very different from the services I have been attending with my parents at their retirement community. There were lots of young families, and it was clear the congregation was thriving, contrary to reports in the wider media. These young families were the next generation of several generations of ancestors who had chosen to bloom where they were planted. I happened to be there on All Saints Sunday, and the service began with the readings of those who had passed over those generations. That meant, in my small rural community, there were many shared last names.
I was a little worried, to be honest, as, other than those retirement community chapel services, I haven’t been to church for a long time, despite having been an active member of several congregations as an adult. It was utterly my fault as even the Unitarian Universalists eventually were a bit too much organized religion for me, but that’s a story for another time.
I have thought a lot about the Sunday service: they celebrated veterans and ancestors, which included children from the church’s pre-school marching and gesturing to God Bless America. Everyone was filming with their cell phones, more like a school concert than church service. There was loud applause throughout the service. (In case you weren’t aware, clapping in church is a hot controversy, evidenced by a quick Google search. The UUs tended toward hand or bulletin waving but had never made a strict policy as was their way.)
The patriotic singing and flag waving might have been concerning had it not been Veteran’s Day. Otherwise, there were no politics, no seeming celebration or gloating, and the sermon, all of five minutes, focused on Jesus’s command in Matthew 22: 36-40 to love your God and love your neighbor. The title–Who is my neighbor?–was a little misleading as the youngish minister, dressed informally in jeans and a striped shirt, focused more on the fact that God loves you and you should love others. That was it. I had sort of looked forward to hearing what he had to say about the answer to his question in light of recent events.
But trying to find an answer gets pretty messy, pretty quickly, and I think was beyond the scope of a simple Sunday service if recent responses to Dan Harris’s post on Instagram are any indication. Harris has been posting clips of last week’s Q&A on Instagram, with many of the questions expressing concern for the election outcome and what it means for the future, from anger to fear to despair. The responses on social media show that there is NO common ground, and while my sympathies may lie with those who are struggling, the posts and replies from both sides are often blunt, bordering on rude, with a side of name calling for good measure. One side says get over it, you are being dramatic. The other side gives reasons for their fear. I know social media doesn’t represent everyone and tends towards these extremes, but the rhetoric itself shows a callousness towards others that has only grown over time and is often what drives media coverage of our country.
It is this divisiveness that I fear the most. When we can’t wrestle with theological questions about the meaning of loving your neighbor but resort to simple aphorisms, when we can’t disagree with each other without demonizing the other side, we are on a downward spiral.