A Clear and Presidential Danger
Reality is undefeated.
Every four years the U.S. goes through presidential election cycles where two candidates typically emerge as the only choices to choose from. Some find this hard when neither candidate seems particularly favorable. For this reason some choose not to vote, while others clarify any talk of a choice they will make with something like, “I have to choose between the lesser of two evils.”
Others go all in on their candidate being the savior of a nation, or on completely hating the other candidate. Using their energies this way allows many to emerge from the humdrum of their lives to engage in some sense of belonging as the nation’s collective unconscious manifest in different ways. Having a scapegoat, that is an enemy or candidate to project all of our unhealed trauma and hate onto, becomes a viable option as others join in the collective unloading. The problem is, that unloading will always return because scapegoats don’t actually heal your wounds. They only run off into the wilderness for a time until you make your own journey into the wilderness to deal with it. On the other hand, thinking a President is the savior that makes all our problems go away distorts our reality and disengages us from the sacred present of our everyday lives. This includes the Sacred Presence available to those who are genuinely suffering.
This is our clear and presidential danger.
Our sense of belonging and the call to the sacred is something that can include, but always transcends, election seasons. We need not be afraid to speak up for candidates we hope can lead to the flourishing of a nation, insofar as their leadership goes, but we must understand the desire to be ruled by a king is often how we disconnect ourselves from reality, even when we think we are engaged with it. In Reality, projecting all your hate and blame onto a presidential candidate is a choice to live in non-reality, all while thinking you are actually doing something important. This projection is a true imprisonment of your political enemies, which in the end you find, was only you imprisoning you. In Reality, projecting all your hope onto a presidential candidate is also living in non-reality, all while thinking that person will set you free. This way finds yourself imprisoned by false-hope even if you think you are on the right side of history.
Reality is undefeated.
Reality often finds you away from the crowds that use their energies of hope and projection in these ways. Real hope is found in not wanting a king to rule over you, unless that King is the actual One of the universe, in which all who are reading this are situated within for the time-being. If we look only for a time-being, like a President, to be our main ruler, we will be blind to the Eternal-Being in which we actually live, move, and have our being. (See Acts 17:28) When we look to the Eternal-Being as our Ruler, we can measure all imperfect leaders through a lens by which they could bring about good or evil, without being devastated if they don’t. Why? Because we know they are human. They are time-beings, as we are, participating in the world together.
However, we are ALL on a journey to become a specific kind of eternal being that is like OUR Father in Heaven and like Christ in death, whether we know it or not.
This journey is a process that is at work regardless of who is President and regardless of where we live on earth. (1 Corinthians 15:53-54) It’s a journey that can be known best through election seasons should we humble ourselves to the point of not putting all our hope or hate into a candidate. If we can do this work and allow God to work in us, surprising things emerge beyond the collective, and our own, unconscious motivations. Essentially, we become conscious of a Larger Story.
A great study on a nation wanting a king to rule over them rather than God is found in the bible in 1 Samuel Chapter 8. I encourage you, even if not a religious type, to read it to see what Wisdom might emerge from the story. You would at least see a modern parallel to what wanting a king to rule over you does for a nation, whether it is the young dying in wars, or money taxed for causes we would rather not support. It is worth the read.
In the end, Reality is undefeated. We are encouraged to engage with these election seasons as we work to see real issues addressed in a nation. The Wisdom however, is for Eternal Being (God) to be our foundation. The current election cycle is a grand invitation, as is all of Life, to learn about the energies we hold inside and how we participate with them, especially towards “others.” Are we learning to love or are we projecting hate? Are we criticizing fairly, or are we one-sided without listening?
That choice is in our power to make regardless of what others do.
Reality from God’s perspective includes one narrative that works itself into the earth in diverse ways for human flourishing. That narrative is: To Love on earth as it is in heaven. This is the daily bread given to us from above.
Once we surrender to this process: no human king, no suffering, no persecution, no material blessing, and not even death, can thwart it. It all works together for our good, and the good of others. Our Clear and Present Invitation is to avoid the present danger of worshiping or hating a presidential candidate, or anyone else. It is a Present Invitation for God to be our only Source that leads to Real Love, Joy, Peace, and Righteousness in every season we are on earth.
This is where we belong in our process of being and becoming what Love will eventually make of us. It is where Christ, the actual scapegoat of all our un-loving or power-clinging energies toward the human race, goes to die in order to resurrect us in a better form. That form, unlike only a ballot form, is the spiritual formation we are after.
Peace on the journey,
-PH