VOTE :: Five-Minute Friday
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VOTE
There's a specific proper noun I've refused to use for the past four years. On Tuesday, I'll find out if I need to keep up my little private resistance for another four. That's the smallest scope possible to view Election Day in the United States, but the narrowness of my focus is helping me keep the whole thing in perspective.
I grew up in the Moral Majority, picketed health clinics as a high-schooler, watched my Dad get arrested for peaceful protest, and then visited him in jail on my eighteenth birthday. Recently, in a robust conversation about politics and theology with my son, I said "I'm not a one-issue voter, but if there were one issue I'd be willing to die for it'd be that one."
But the platform and the rhetoric and the hubris has become untenable. My scope for understanding what it means to be "pro" something has had to expand beyond all the false dichotomies I was taught in my political, social, and theological formation. I am politically homeless, voting one way so that I can give up my tiny resistance refusing to name those who don't deserve to be named.
I'm voting on Tuesday so that maybe some of the lives that have been grabbed, stepped on, thrown in cages, turned away, dismissed, underpaid, under-resourced, and other assorted methods of denigrating the imago dei can be named as viable and worthy as any other life pro-life presumes to revere.
I'm voting on Tuesday so that I can tell my kids and grandkids I refused the false dichotomies of one-issue voting and rejected supporting grabs for power under the banner "sanctity of life".
I'm voting on Tuesday as a temporary citizen of the United States whose entire allegiance belongs only to the ascended King Jesus whose name is radiant and blameless and mighty to save us from our hypocrisy and our helplessness.
I'm voting on Tuesday as one tiny act of loving God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength and loving my neighbor as myself. In that sense, my one action is almost meaningless, but not quite. The levers I pull behind the curtain carry almost no eternal significance. Those few seconds of casting my tiny human opinion into the vast ocean of human thought, structures, and economies carry almost no eternal significance. But the person I am - before, during, and after those few seconds - that work is eternal and precious.
On Tuesday I'll vote as the person I'm becoming - more like Jesus and more like the Tamara the Creator has always imagined, the Tamara called to give and receive the love, mercy, and justice of God indiscriminately to every neighbor. I'll pray for you as you do the same.
Peace, friends.
Tamara
Welcome back to the new weekly feature, Five-Minute Friday. For the remaining weeks of Ordinary Time, I'll be sharing a five-minute written reflection on one word I've been pondering. (I'm literally setting a stopwatch for five minutes so that I can just write already!)
Thanks for being a listening community and a safe place to offer stories from my everyday experiences and epiphanies. I'm grateful for your companionship.
I'd love to hear your reflections from this week. Feel free to respond to the word "HELD" or just share your own experiences and epiphanies from the week.
*This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up! You can read all the Five-Minute Friday posts here.