This week my prayers have steered into the skid that is the fallout from the election. A prayer that keeps popping up in my mind is one commonly known as "The Prayer of Saint Francis." Francis probably didn't author this prayer, but it echoes the ethos of a man whose faith and compassion for those around him is still a marvel today. I love this prayer and have for many years. In a time when people are frightened and filled with turmoil, "Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace" seems like the thing to pray.

It's what I want to pray, but parts of it are so difficult. It's not the beginning. I want to sow love where there is hatred, pardon where there is injury, faith where there is doubt, hope where there is despair, light where there is darkness, and joy where there is sadness. I desire that with my entire being.

Jim and Liam,

It's well after midnight and it looks like Donald Trump will be elected president. From where I sit right now, that reality is frightening. I don't think this is the end of the world or that our country will be destroyed though I confess there is a small part of me that worries about that. At the very least I worry about the people in our country who live in the margins and are the most vulnerable.

What is most upsetting to me is that this man said horrible and untrue things about women, immigrants, African-Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, and the disabled throughout his campaign. These things weren't hidden. We all knew about them. He has lied. He has been a bully. And a plurality of this beautiful country I love thought him fit to lead our nation.

It has been a long, strange, crazy, disheartening, occasionally encouraging, downright weird election season. And it all ends today. Hypothetically. Please God, let it end today. Tomorrow we should be able to take a collective breath and lower our controversial conversations to whether it's okay for people to be playing Christmas music in early November (It is, but does that mean one should?). 

But I have some bad news. It doesn't end today. This country will still be bitterly divided tomorrow. This election cycle has revealed an ugly stain of discord in our national dialogue. People of opposing viewpoints will not talk to one another. They won't even validate the right for their opponent to disagree. The campaign has also exposed the vile racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and other prejudices that are far more common than any of us would like to admit. None of that vanishes tomorrow.

The other day, I hazily recalled reading in high school US History textbook that women buried their Bibles for fear that Thomas Jefferson would do something awful to the Good Book. This recollection led me to googling the phrase that appears as the title of this post and discovering on this page that this craziness actually happened in the Presidential Election of 1800. It also led me to putting together an attack

Dr. Timothy Dwight, the President of Yale, predicted in (unfortunately) a sermon that an America under the Democratic-Republican candidate would see all Bibles burned, women and children forced into legal prostitution, and the country would basically be turned into Western France (there has always been someone in this country who didn't like France).

I have been thinking a lot about my spiritual journey recently. The truth of the matter is that whatever has been done to get me to the nebulous "here" of being ordained is not solely my doing. Not even close. This goes beyond the true answer that God is the source and sustainer of our spiritual being. Today is All Saints' Day. This is a day when we remember the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us in faith. Women and men whose examples spur us on to follow after God. 

Who I am in faith is the product of thousands if not tens of thousands of people who are living and dead, known and unknown to me, spread across time and some of whom will outlive me in the future. I did not get here on my own. I was carried by many and will continue to be carried as I am continually formed spiritually until my dying breath.

I can readily identity my problem. I feel incredibly fractured right now. With my family still in the Upstate, my heart is between Nashville and Spartanburg. This too shall pass but it all feels strange and, honestly, quite lonely. I feel like I'm watching my present, unfamiliar life from a distance sometimes. I feel like waves of energy that are bouncing back and forth between two timezones. Thus most of what I have sat down to write feels hollow, robotic.

But it is what it is. Bemoaning is not going to change a thing. The move to Nashville has been good. It is where we need to be. December will come and bring my family with it. But in the meantime, I am faced with this armful of questions. How do I make the most of right now? How do I avoid just looking toward the future and thus burn a month and a half of time? How does that creative spark begin to once again glow? How can I not feel disembodied?

"It's just words, folks. It's just words."

Growing up, I always heard that childhood standby: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." I understand why we're told that. You don't want your kid to haul off and sock a seven year old because they're called a doo-doo head. But that saying is a lie. Words wound. In some ways, a word is worse than a stick or a stone because you can't see the damage done.

Words are powerful. Take away language and our civilization would be in a huge mess. Words convey what is most important to each of us. We express love, needs, and hatred with words.