Election Blues: Hoping against Despair

Letters to America #2: Three prescriptions for all who are stressed out with the (election) news cycle.

Taking in a last paddle up north. (All photos by A. Furchert)

Friends and fellow pilgrims,

“What meaningful can I still do?” a German client desperately asked me several weeks ago in face of the never ending conflicts on this planet. “What meaningful can I do?,” many Americans ask these days facing another US election. “Will my vote make a difference?,” or: “Will we ever recover from this cycle of blame and hatred and division?”

In-midst of this climate of fearful anticipation I am reminded of Krista Tippet’s: “We must insist on joy…,” as she wrote in one of her letters:

“Whatever is before us, we must insist on joy wherever and whenever we can find it, must honor creaturely release and comfort and delights, for these are our human birthright of fuel for persisting, for orienting insistently towards what is life-giving, within every righteous struggle that is ours to face.”

And I am grateful for these words as they offer me a life line to hang on to. Joy is not just a feeling, it is a life giving necessity. We must honor it and cradle it and persist on it.