My inner compass has been spinning around restlessly all day because of this election. I’m finding it hard to be present to the tasks I’m physically doing. My body feels tense. My soul feels dread. I sort of feel like crying.

I need some perspective. I need to pray.

God of all that is,
of constancy
and of continual change (which is its own kind of constancy),
of babies getting born today
and loved ones dying,
of people finding out they don’t have long to live
and those rejoicing in the news that they do,
of someone discovering something wonderful in a flower
or a friendship
or a good night’s sleep;
God of mysteries pulsing in galaxies light years away
and creatures dancing at the bottom of the sea,
of leaves the shades of fire
and the beggars I passed on the street today;
God of kisses
and handshakes
and warm embraces,
of wind
and rain
and sunlight on my cheeks,
of the big and the small
and everything that can’t be measured:

Breathe on me
Breathe in me
Breathe,
that as my inner compass turns
and my fears and restlessness churn
into tight shoulders
and fists
and forehead
I might discover a centering pattern of
In
Out
In
Out
The steady rhythm of your breath
That is and is an echo of
the universe expanding and contracting
seasons cycling
plants sprouting and being harvested
births and deaths
the rising and setting of the sun,
my own lungs keeping me alive:

Breathe in and over me this Pattern that happens
No matter who becomes president
No matter whose votes get counted
No matter how many lawsuits get filed.

Breathe, that I might feel your breath
And be comforted.
Breathe, that in this time of national uncertainty
And tension
And rivalry
And distrust
Something bigger and smaller than all of this will sustain what needs sustaining
And whisper a perspective
We all so need to hear.

Selah

Well, it looks like I’m out $400 because of a mistake a mechanic made on a car repair I had done last week. That may be pennies to some people, but to our household budget, it’s a small fortune. The guy supposedly repaired a transmission oil leak, but then my transmission proceeded to develop an uncomfortable lurch every time I decelerated toward a stop, so I took the car back and a different guy at the shop looked to see – you guessed it – transmission oil still leaking. But this time it was around a very un-artistic smear of tar that the first mechanic had slopped over the real leak once he saw that oil was still flowing after the initial repair. He had conveniently not told me about this smear, or the unrepaired leak that it was intended to stop up…the “repairs” for which I had gone and paid $400.

The story goes on and on – trips back to the same shop, trips to a different shop, conversations with a very shifty-eyed original mechanic who of course doesn’t want to admit that he didn’t take enough time initially to correctly diagnose the problem. I haven’t got my money back, and I now have to pay $610 (to a different shop, of course) to repair the part of the transmission that’s actually been the problem all along.

But the point I want to make here isn’t about all these specifics (though I admit it feels good to vent on them a bit). It’s rather about the general idea of what to do with feelings of being wronged. And both being and feeling helpless to get the wrongdoer(s) to apologize or right the wrongs in any way.

How do I keep from allowing experiences like this to control me – to darken my mood and fill me with vengeful thoughts and less-than-complementary stereotypes of the entire group of people to which my wrongdoer belongs (in this case car mechanics)? Being wronged makes it feel so justified and appropriate to demonize individuals and groups. And to nurse bitterness, furrowed brows, and dark, grumpy clouds over one’s head. I know I’m not alone in this (think 9/11, think race relations, think Israel/Palestine, or any of the “isms” that women and gays and people of color and the elderly chafe so hard against). It feels terrible to be wronged, and pretty darn good, at least on one level, to feel righteously indignant.

I have no eloquent word to speak to this issue right now (frankly, I’m still mad). But I’m pretty sure that bitterness and vengeance aren’t things I want to spend my energy on. So what does one do, in response to being wronged, as well as in a more ongoing, lifestyle way, to be authentically human without getting stuck in the bitter, dissonant parts of that very authenticity?

Is this a theme I keep returning to?…

I’ve just returned home from a lecture given by Cornel West, a sociologist/philosopher/professor/writer/activist/(I’m sure there are a few other roles I’ve missed) currently at Princeton (though the lecture was over here at Stanford). And my heart is on fire.

The title of the lecture was “Democracy Matters,” and West spent the hour painting a simultaneously dark and hopeful portrait of democracy in America. To the same extent that incisive, provocative, self-critical, dominant-line-critical questioning (symbolized by Socrates) and prophetic compassion (symbolized by the Jewish line of prophets) are pushed to the margins of American life, democracy dies, he said. To the extent that these are jointly nurtured, democracy lives on.

I wish I could convey even sparks from the fire Cornel burned tonight. I want to download the whole lecture and just say, “Here; go listen to this. Seriously – you’ll love it.” Instead I’ll try and settle for three of the points I connected most with:
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Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about my place in the world – who I am and am becoming, how and what I’d like to contribute. While my interests are broad, I’m drawn most deeply toward inner things – activities and writings and conversations that deal with inner growth, inner healing, inner change. Stuff of the soul.

What does this mean, I’ve wondered, for the ways I engage the world around me – a world that is shaped tremendously by inner landscapes (the brokenness and wholeness inside each of us), but that simultaneously demands engagement at an outer, public level? At least from one perspective, elections are decided, for example, or policies written, or organizations founded and run not by people sitting alone in front of therapists, or journals, or shrines, but by folks walking precincts, by suits behind desks, by time-consuming research, grant-writing, networking, speech-giving, and cooperation. The impact of the public sphere on all of us can’t be taken lightly (if for no other reason than that it pays our bills!).

In my attempts at finding my role in the world, I look around at how full of shadow the public sphere seems to be, and wonder sometimes whether public light is the only kind worth trying to shine. There is urgency, gripping and practical, in every public torch that people raise.

But something makes me pause in that conclusion.
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Just read and appreciated this editorial - especially the last paragraph. May write more on my engagement with politics in the next few days…

A week ago I wrote a response to Beslan’s recent tragedy. Since then, my reading and reflecting has taken me to other broken places - within myself, within the earth, within other people. Like this week, broken places often leave me quiet.

Poet Jean Janzen writes a poem by this same name - Broken Places - that evokes images I find nourishing at the end of a week like this. The power and gentleness of personified mountains, holding us, baptizing us in their own broken crags: my mind turns to god.

Here is the poem:

We know that the mountains
can’t heal us, even as they stand
beside us, serene after their own
great upheaval. And from the deep,

the hidden springs rise.
“For my irregular heart,” my father
said, soaking in the sulpherous pool,
the rain sizzling around him.

On the other side of the world
Mitsuko and I strip and scrub,
then enter the tranquil heat.
Like sisters, no need to speak,

for the water has claimed us,
holding us above the rush
of the river. All of us shipwrecked,
clutching what we can,

no cure except the final one.
But here, for awhile, our bodies release
the secret aches. Holding nothing
but water in our arms, we lean

against the split and tumbled sides
of rocks, here where the mountain’s heart
spills out, holding us in its own
broken place, the mists rising.

The grief-stricken face of a father carrying the bloodied body of a child met me this morning as I raised my newspaper from its sunny spot on the porch. As I read, a tea kettle sang in the next complex over, and birds from branches and treetops nearby. While I slept last night, over 200 people got killed in the “ending” (as the headline reads) of the hostage crisis in Beslan, Russia.

Dear God…dear God. The crisis has not ended. That father’s face, the frightened faces of the surviving children (arms clutched around each other’s necks), the face of a mother, stroking her dead boy’s cheek… No, the crisis has not ended. Dear God, it’s just begun.

Until the last few years, I lived believing the world is largely a fearful place: full of bad, bad things, bad, bad people, and opportunities to be alone when help is most needed. Tumbling through my crisis of faith a few years ago, I discovered a wall of rage inside as well, directed at a God who seems conspicuously absent where help is most required. Explanations as to why an all-loving, all-powerful God would sit passively back (or even with tears in his or her eyes), watching us suffer our horrors: for me, these all fell flat. Either that God doesn’t exist, I concluded, or…doesn’t deserve to.

A hundred books, a million conversations, three years of therapy, and mountains of reflection later, I’ve mostly released that God from my angry clutches. I’m learning to trust that if there is a God – defined in whatever anthropomorphic or nonanthropomorphic ways that can be done – that God is not a jerk. God is not a jerk. If I’m to be sane, I have to believe it.

So I sit with these pictures, this morning, and the knowledge that Beslan is howling with grief and fear and rage. I don’t know how to see God in the mess. But I add my voice to Beslan’s, and envision our wail as a massive, human prayer, rising from all the horrors that have been and ever will be.

And in this act, I see that each of us is far, far from alone.