What can I say for you, to what compare you, O daughter Jerusalem? To what can I liken you, that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter Zion? For vast as the sea is your ruin; who can heal you? Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions; they have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but have seen oracles for you that are false and misleading. All who pass along the way clap their hands at you; they hiss and wag their heads at daughter Jerusalem; ‘Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?’ All your enemies open their mouths against you; they hiss, they gnash their teeth, they cry: ‘We have devoured her! Ah, this is the day we longed for; at last we have seen it!’……the LORD has done what he purposed, he has carried out his threat; as he ordained long ago, he has demolished without pity; he has made the enemy rejoice over you, and exalted the might of your foes.
I have kept this blog for over eight years. In all that time, I have never addressed politics. Like death and taxes, they are an inevitable part of our existence and I just assumed that like a posterior, every person has a specific type. For my international readers, I am a US citizen and was raised by my parents to be an intelligent, thinking voter. No party allegiance is listed on my voter registration card; I am what is termed an Independent. Prior to the 2016 election I always had a candidate I clearly supported and, win or lose, I felt good about my choice and the fact that I had a say in the government’s leadership. This time, though, I struggled to find the positive in both major parties’ candidates. While I detested the xenophobic comments that vomited out of Donald Trump’s mouth, I also hated that Hillary Clinton directed the democratic party to blackball an independent candidate for president. It felt like I had to choose between having a root canal or an enema – either way, it would be pretty painful.
Most of my friends know that though I identify as centrist, my progressive views on social justice brand me a “lib’rul” in the eyes of conservatives. It’s because of my social justice concerns that late that Tuesday evening, as the electoral college votes kept rising steadily in support of a person who has said derogatory things about several major ethnic groups, I felt compelled to sit and pray. Pray for my nation. Pray for the winner. Pray for the loser. I felt a level of fear I have rarely felt in my life. For the first time ever, I had an inkling of what daily life must be like for those people who live in the restless zones of the Middle East and other areas where warfare is a way of life rather than an occasional interruption of privilege. Because I knew what would happen if we elected the one whose running mate is clueless enough to believe that homosexuality can be ‘cured’ through therapy. It was not a surprise when the protests began. I could only sit and watch numbly as the nation we always touted as the ideal for any person from anywhere to come and make a good life began to crack.
Cry aloud to the Lord! O wall of daughter Zion! Let tears stream down like a torrent day and night! Give yourself no rest, your eyes no respite! Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches! Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord! Lift your hands to him for the lives of your children, who faint for hunger at the head of every street. Look, O LORD, and consider! To whom have you done this?.....the young and the old are lying on the ground in the streets; my young women and my young men have fallen by the sword; on the day of your anger you have killed them, slaughtering without mercy. You invited my enemies from all around as if for a day of festival; and on the day of the anger of the LORD no one escaped or survived; those whom I bore and reared my enemy has destroyed. The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me.
In the aftermath of the election, I was appalled that we are divided so clearly. That we would have no qualms voting for a man who degrades women and the disabled. That we would mourn not having elected a woman who by her own admission has done unethical things to clear a path to the presidency. But what bothered me most is that so many people with the same progressive views were truly stunned – that they believed this could never happen. What does that say about our level of awareness as a nation? Nothing positive.
And yet, I see a glimmer of the future….those who were convinced that they would never need to fight for their rights, those who said they would never take to the streets to protest, have been doing so. Those of us who were born and raised with privilege are realizing for the first time that freedom truly does come at a cost, and that we are responsible to every citizen of this nation for every action and its consequences. The day I saw a video of US military veterans on their knees at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota begging forgiveness of the Lakota people there for all the evil done them by the US government, the heaviness in my chest lightened slightly. Perhaps this extreme situation is what we needed to teach us about real interconnectedness. All is not lost.
But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The LORD is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’
