Read this after you've voted!

We've finally made it to Election Day. It is with curiosity and trepidation we await the outcomes. There's no way in hell we would have anticipated what happened two years ago. Now we get to participate in a stress test of our democracy to see how resilient it is and we are and when and how and how soon we can engage in regenerative development. Today, we are especially grateful we will get a respite from negative political ads for at least a week or so.

These past two years have reeducated us to the realization that democracy is not a project. It is a process. As far as we know, life began at a single cell, or more basic, level and continues to grow in complexity on Earth. Each human is a diversity of cells functioning as one person. We learn in ecology that monocultures are more vulnerable to disease than multicultural farming. Democracy that tries to become monocultural faces the same limitations. Ever since we read Terry Tempest Williams' Finding Beauty in a Broken World, we've been biased in favor of thinking about these United States as a mosaic rather than a melting pot. There is a reason the motto of our country is E pluribus unum.

a mosaic: one picture, many different pieces

Photo by J. Harrington

If today's voting doesn't bring us all the outcomes we hoped for, tomorrow will be time to hitch up our jeans and start again for the next election cycle. We're pretty sure folks on the other side will do the same.

Election Day

By J. D. McCLATCHY 

The older couples had voted just after dawn,
And by noon the exit polls are underway.
Some talking head opines in San Jose.
My poster is mute and silent on the lawn.

“As the wind blows, so the flag will wave,”
Says a cynic who is nevertheless waiting in line.
The woman in front of him has been assigned
The nearest booth where she plans, again, to save

The Republic from itself — the drama played out
In this miniature theater, with its curtain and cast.
Today will be a performance of the past,
Its fortunes and flaws, its certainty and doubt.

The pencil has no eraser. She makes her choice,
Determined but still uncertain how it will end,
As the Founders were as well who thought to lend
So much importance to each small impassioned voice.

But will the cynic’s vote now cancel hers?
She stays behind to watch him enter the booth.
(In our democracy, we think “the truth”
Is what everyone, regardless, secretlyprefers.) 

She won’t know anything but threats and trends

Until, again in the dark, but midnight’s now,
She can sense what hope the numbers will allow,
And what you get when you smear or overspend. 

She will sit and stare at charts on CNN.
(But aren’t we redeemed by what they cannotshow?
The struggle in each restless heart to know
The terms on which the nation’s fate depends.) 

She will think how, at last, millions have spoken as one,
That freedom requires an open mind and hand,
And the strength to be forgiven and understand,
And that tomorrow morning it has all just begun.

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