I woke up in the dark hours with one word in my mind. Radiate. I repeated it, feeling its importance to the coming hours. Just as the sun fulfills this task without question, I too, must arrive to the day ready to shine. Radiate. The word lingered. Radiate what? I wondered. The urge to finish the thought nudged me to waken, to ripen the word to a phrase, to a song, to a prayer. Radiate kindness. Radiate welcome. Radiate belonging. Acceptance. Wonder.
I woke up in the dark hours with one word in my mind. Radiate.
In a flurry of texts over the past couple days, I received a message from an acquaintance once removed who was a church friend of my uncle and aunt, now deceased. The Phillipino woman is a dentist who works in public health. On occasion, we shared meals at my aunt and uncle’s, and I liked her spunk and her selfless work to improve the oral health of underserved children in Houston schools.
I hadn’t heard from Jess in years. Her text felt strange upon the first reading and subsequent text got stranger. The first message read Election Day here in the US!! Pray with us. My warrior song for the day. What followed was a youtube link that displayed the lyrics of the song: You are a mighty warrior dressed in armor of light, crushing the deeds of darkness, lead us on in the fight. Through the blood of Jesus, victorious we stand. We place You in the highest place above all else in this land. Had she confused me with my sister, the practicing evangelical? Or was she pushing her agenda on her entire contact list? I felt like some kind of reply was in order, but it took me a couple hours to answer, and then with a vague response: good to hear from you / haven’t missed an election since I was first eligible to vote in 1976 / smiley face. That was that. I thought. Then this morning, I received another text. It read “I was fasting and praying yesterday when I realized this is not about President Trump, really, it is about the purposes of God in this nation and in the world!!!. God is just using this man as an instrument. So we can boldly pray, “Let God arise and His enemies scatter!”
Even with my early morning intention to radiate, the words paralyzed me. No amount of stewing would loosen my stiff inability to understand how her logic worked. How does a Christian overlook the lies, the violence against women, the racism, the arrogance, the devestating lack of empathy? Where would I find an answer to her?
I sat at the kitchen table and reigned in the ideas that had grown from my waking word. Radiate. I worked my words around until they felt true and wrote them with purple pen on handmade paper. With love as my guide, may I radiate welcome, kindness, peace. May my heart open in fearless wonder to the tension of opposites. May hope map my way. I placed the prayer in a ceramic bowl near a south-facing window that catches the autumn sun.
During the tasks of the day, checking the mail, dusting the mantle, folding the afghan, watering the plants, I returned to the simple altar, rereading the message I had translated from my deepest knowings. Each time, the ink held true to the paper and true to my soul. I also returned to the phone message, the battering ram of assertions that had bruised my spirit. I decided in one long sigh that I was not obligated to answer. Jess and I were not in conversation nor were we in rhyme. Her world was split between God and His enemies. And that meant I was one.
It’s taken a long time for me to learn to listen to my body, one gift that aging has given me. I noticed the feeling of shrinking, of being made small. I knew the feeling of needing to exhale toxins that troubled my belly. I choose welcome for myself. Kindness for myself. Peace for myself. I could be open in fearless wonder to the tension of opposites. But I didn’t need to enlist in a war of words. I didn’t need to defend my ground. I did not have to answer the call to arms. Not with Jess. Not in a text. Not today.
As the twilight sun radiated its golden glow into the living room, I stepped over to the bowl that held my early morning prayer. With love as my guide...May hope map the way.
Directions arrived for me in the bird song of an email from the Center for Action and Contemplation, a mentor in my spiritual practice. I had fallen behind in my daily readings since the week began and opened the mailing from November 3, Election Day, the day I had received the first text from Jess. The contemplation, titled The Heart of Democracy, offered an opening quote that rather than shrinking my place in the word, enlarged it.
Renewed contact with the Gospel of faith, of hope and of love invites us to assume a creative and renewed spirit. In this way, we will be able to transform the roots of our physical, spiritual and social infirmities and the destructive practices that separate us from each other, threatening the human family and our planet. —Pope Francis
What followed was an excerpt from Parker Palmer’s Healing the Heart of Democracy (Jossey-Bass, 2011):
For those of us who want to see democracy survive and thrive—and we are legion—the heart is where everything begins: that grounded place in each of us where we can overcome fear, rediscover that we are members of one another, and embrace the conflicts that threaten democracy as openings to new life for us and for our nation. . . .
Of all the tensions we must hold in personal and political life, perhaps the most fundamental and most challenging is standing and acting with hope in the “tragic gap.” On one side of that gap, we see the hard realities of the world, realities that can crush our spirits and defeat our hopes. On the other side of that gap, we see real-world possibilities, life as we know it could be because we have seen it that way. . . .
Grateful for the web of life that has brought such bird songs to my waiting ears, I rested my head on my pillow with the comfort of good counsel after another day of learning how to keep strengthening, comforting, and softening my heart.