 Reverend Kelly shared some words with me this week from Reverend Angel Kyoto Williams, the world's second female Zen teacher of African descent. These words appeared in the New York Times on November 2nd, the day before the election. Reverend Williams wrote, our anxiety comes from the desire to have things be different. There's gonna be the day after the election and the day after that. We need to be present to what is regardless of the outcome you want. My ancestors had to prepare themselves over and over again for moving toward a freedom that was nowhere in sight. We prepare for life as it unfolds, not our ideal image of it. That is literally the only path forward. So our task this morning is to be present with what is. The election results were mixed. Maybe there is one thing amidst that most Americans have in common on November 8th, 2020, mixed feelings about the election. Of course, the content of our feelings are often polar opposites. So far in this new millennium, the United States has been a nation that is deeply, persistently, and remarkably evenly divided. In 2000 and 2004, it didn't seem possible to me that that polarization could get any deeper. It's gotten exponentially deeper. Some people on both sides of this great divide hoped that this election would decisively spell the end of the divide with our side winning. I know I had that hope at least a little bit. Once again, I thought maybe this will be the election that is finally a turning point. Maybe this will be the election where the growing ethnic and racial diversity of the US and the relatively progressive younger adult vote will finally change the narrative. Once again, that did not happen, at least not on a grand scale. It's noteworthy to me that many people of color were less likely to see the 2016 election as a fluke or to pin this kind of hope on the 2020 election. One writer in the Washington Post observed that white liberal men, like me, were the people most likely to expect a blue landslide on Tuesday. So looking at the whole picture, neither side won a decisive game-changing victory this week, just like in all of the elections since 2000. Some things happened this week that make me joyous. Some things happened that feel like a relief. Some things happened that I find deeply discouraging and distressing. Some things are happening after the election that leave me deeply anxious and deeply disturbed. So I found myself this week vacillating wildly between the glass half-full or better or to see if the glass is half-empty or worse. Maybe you have to. I want to acknowledge this morning that there's folks in this congregation, no doubt, who are experiencing this great American divide in deeply personal and painful ways. It has split families in two. In some cases, people who love but don't understand each other may no longer be talking to one another. My heart breaks for those of you who are experiencing this. I also want to acknowledge that there are people in, and of course beyond this congregation, who are deeply, deeply worried about erratically reshaped judiciary, depriving them of some of their basic human rights. There are folks who continue to feel an emotional and physical danger as what were once dog whistles of hatred and exclusion continue to be more like air horns. My heart breaks for those who are experiencing intense, relentless feelings of danger. I feel like in some ways, the gaping chasm we're experiencing today and over these last 20 years was really baked into the founding of the United States. From the beginning, there was a tension between those who lifted up the common good and those who wanted this nation to be all about individual freedom. One way we are living out that tension today is in those who choose to wear masks to help those people they know as well as strangers stay safe. And those who insist that not wearing a mask is their right and privilege as Americans. I've always sided with the founder's notion of the common good. In recent years, I've begun to face the painful fact that this notion had a deep flaw. For the founders, the common good included only a narrow band of the new country's human inhabitants, white male landowners. For the vast majority of the founders, it specifically and especially did not include enslaved blacks or indigenous people or even free blacks. That horrific, tragic, narrow view of who's included and who's excluded runs through all of our history. We've been in a 250 year struggle to expand that circle of inclusion. Today, this American divide is made deeper and more intractable by the extraordinary degree of moral certitude most of us, me included, bring to this dysfunctional American party. Here are some of the beliefs that I hold with deep moral certainty. The diversity of the United States is our greatest asset. It is wrong to turn our backs and close our borders to people who are seeking asylum and safety in the United States. It is wrong to put immigrant children in cages and it is wrong to tear them apart and keep them separate from their parents. Our system of law enforcement is beset by systemic racism which continues to manifest itself in the horror of unarmed black people and other people of color getting killed by police. Every person has the right to choose whom they love, whether and whom they marry and their gender identity. A woman has the right to make decisions about her body including whether to continue a pregnancy. Continuing to spew carbon emissions is killing our and millions of other species habitat. Being awash in guns helps make possible a horrible and avoidable loss of life through suicide as well as homicide. Every person should have equal access to voting and every person has a right to have their vote counted. These are things I hold strongly and deeply and with moral certainty. And I hold each of these truths to be self-evident. These beliefs are grounded in my morality. They're anchored in the unitarian universalist belief system as I understand it. The problem from my perspective is that about half the country holds beliefs that in many cases are diametrically opposed to my beliefs and they hold them with equally strong moral certitude. This entrenched moral certitude on each side is making it impossible for us to talk to each other. This is how that divide keeps growing wider and deeper. I'm really struck by how isolated I've become from people with diametrically opposed beliefs from mine in the past decade. Other than a stray nephew or two and a brother-in-law, everyone I know and talk with, family, friends, coworkers, people in the congregation probably voted the same way that I did. I really don't regularly talk to conservatives anymore. And I have to say, if I can figure out how to interact with people with whom I disagree, I'm not willing to set my moral convictions aside. I'm not willing to keep quiet as unarmed black people keep getting killed by police and trans people get murdered and women are forced to travel hundreds of miles to exercise their reproductive freedom and children are getting killed in school shootings. I'm not willing to accept intimidating and silencing marginalized people whose voices and dreams have been silenced and suppressed for too long. I'm not willing to stop acting and speaking on my deeply held moral convictions. And yet as a person of privilege, somehow I need to find a way to open myself to Americans who hold very different views from mine. Change is not likely to happen if we all stick to like-minded people. And I'll be honest, I'm not sure how to do this. Maybe it begins with a willingness to embrace or at least sit with some conflicting imperatives. My image for how to do this is Mahatma Gandhi. He held his moral convictions deeply, so deeply that he was willing and indeed did die for them. And he believed that the people who were trying to imprison him, to harass him and even kill him had dignity and worth. He therefore was not willing to do violence to them. He stayed open and connected to them. He loved those who joined him in the cause for freedom and independence and justice. And he loved the British imperialist occupiers and the Hindu nationalists who threatened and one day took his life. Though not without flaw, Gandhi found a way to live and be in this complex and perfect world. So a picture this week has nurtured me and it's the picture of Gandhi sitting on the floor at his loom serenely spinning as the world sometimes went insane around him. Doing that was a political act. He spun his own clothes and encouraged other Indians to do the same rather than buying British clothing and supporting the empire. It was also a spiritual practice. It grounded him and it helped him live and be in this world of both and rather than either or. It helped him live with integrity and impact in the world that is even when that promised land of true freedom and peace and justice was nowhere in sight. Will I be able to channel Gandhi perfectly? No, and I take some comfort in the fact that Gandhi wasn't able to channel Gandhi perfectly either. Will what I do make a small difference? I don't know, but I sure feel called to try. And so I lift up that image in my mind's eye as often as I can. The question we have this month in worship is how do we become a people of healing in the world that is? Well, I think we do so by holding our beliefs strongly and speaking and acting on them, by keeping our hearts open and our minds curious, by seeking ways to find and spread love.