I spent my time this weekend in Nashville, Tennessee, attending the 50th wedding anniversary of my father’s only sister and the man with whom she’s shared her life for a half century.
I heard a lot of stories there, many of them worthy of repeating.
I could tell you the story of the time my uncle learned of my aunt’s first pregnancy while flying helicopters in Vietnam right after the Tet Offensive, or the one about how he crash landed his helicopter in a rice paddy with enough explosive ordnance strapped to it to obliterate half a city block.
I could tell you the story of my aunt’s employment beginning in the early 60’s as an editor and writer for a prominent Methodist Publisher, and the constant sexism and harassment she overcame to fashion a career for herself in a Southern city at a major Christian book publisher when the feminist movement barely existed outside of New York City.
I could tell you the story of a friend of my aunt and uncle, Bill Dockery, who is a member of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville – the same church where a lone wolf gunman, James David Adkisson, inspired by Fox News Hate speech and a desire to kill liberals, murdered one man and one woman, and wounded several others. It’s the story of how he escaped being shot himself and possibly killed by that terrorist because on that Sunday he was transporting his adopted daughter, a developmentally challenged African American child (who I also had the pleasure to meet) to summer camp instead of attending services. It’s also the story of the aftermath of that tragedy and its continuing effect on his life over the past seven years.
Or the story of how their church, Hickory Bend United Methodist Church was rebuilt after being destroyed by the great flood of 2010, as well as the homes of many of its members, a story in which my Uncle Jim played a big part.
I could even tell you the story in which I played a far too prominent role, where I suddenly was afflicted by a sudden onset of anaphylaxis due to (we believe) a reaction to my Aunt and Uncle’s cats, one which required my uncle on the evening of his anniversary celebration to take me to the ER of a local hospital and stay with me until various IV medicines and respiratory treatments resolved my symptoms. Let’s just say I sure livened up their after-party.
But those stories can wait for another day. Instead, I want to tell you about something I learned from the current minister of their church about my Aunt and Uncle. A brief story, but one that has some relevance for all of us at this website, in my humble opinion. Please follow me below the fold and I’ll tell you all about it.
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Now the first thing you need to know is that my Aunt and Uncle are both devout Methodists, but also political liberals. And they do not just profess their faith and their principles, they act on them. The church they attend is open to all, and accepts people of any race or sexual orientation. It also doesn’t restrict its good deeds to helping its own members.
And over the years, my Aunt and Uncle have played a major role in helping the church assume a more social activist role in the community. Where they see a need, my Aunt and Uncle do their darnedest to find a way to get their church involved in helping fill it. Their church supported marriage equality before it was popular. It supported people of all faiths and races from discrimination and violence. More importantly, their church has participated in programs to feed the hungry, help the poor, aid the homeless and stand for those things that so may Christian churches claim they support, but so few actually do anything about.
Now at the end of the official program celebrating their anniversary, there was an open mic session where people were allowed the opportunity to share anything they wanted to share regarding my aunt and uncle. The first person to step forward was the minister of their church, Pastor Susan Gray. Now she’s only been the minister for a few years, far shorter than the three decades my aunt and uncle have been members, but she already had a wealth of anecdotes to tell about them – how they helped her adjust to her new congregation, for example, or how, even when it appears my uncle is sleeping through her sermons, afterward he will inevitably drop by and discuss with her how “That was a great sermon, Susan, but you got this part wrong …”
The thing that really stuck with me though, was when she remarked that Shari and Jim (sorry but I’m getting tired of saying “my aunt and uncle” over and over and over again) attend all the various and innumerable committee meetings that churches are known for because they are leaders in their church. And at those meetings they generally have some ideas or proposals for to how improve the church, or do more to aid the local community, etc. Which was nice to hear, that they are still so active, still trying to think of new ways to make their church a force for good in their small corner of the world.
However, what Pastor Gray said next is the real heart of the message she wanted to give us. “You know,” she said, “they both fight hard for their own ideas, but if another plan is chosen, Shari and Jim will work just has hard to make that plan succeed as they would for one of their own.” And that struck me as something valuable.
I mean, who doesn’t like their own ideas, and their own choices on how to solve problems? Who doesn’t believe that their way is better, and woe to any fools who think otherwise? But the reality of life is that we can’t always get our own way. Sometimes the plan we believe is best, the one we care about the most, and in which we have invested time and great effort, is not the one that prevails.
For example, consider the Affordable Care Act. Many of us thought and continue to think it could have gone further, could have included a public option or adopted a “Medicare for all” approach. But those ideas, those policies, were not the ones selected. Yet, in the end, most of us fought for the ACA against the many lies told by Republicans about what it would do, and the many attempts by conservatives to derail it, both in Congress and in the courts. And now we have 15 million or more people covered by health insurance that had no coverage before. And more people have coverage that is affordable, insurance that must include coverage for our adult children until the age of 26, and must not exclude people with pre-existing conditions, and so on and so forth. If we hadn’t fought for the ACA none of those benefits would have been realized, and the lives of millions would be much worse off.
Now we are just beginning the process whereby our party’s candidates for the 2016 election will be selected, both for national, state and local offices. Obviously, the one that has generated the most heat and controversy is the battle for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. There are people on both sides who feel strongly about their chosen candidate. And I understand why there has been and will continue to be a great deal of fighting and arguing among the partisan supporters for Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.
Some of those arguments, however, often degenerate into personal attacks and name-calling and general nastiness in which the word respect seems to have been eradicated from the dictionary. Where people talk past one another or choose to say hurtful and offensive things out of nothing but animus.
Well, it is all fine and good to support whomever you like. And sometimes people will say things in support of their candidate that cross the line. But in the end, what value is there in denigrating other people because they don’t like the choice you made?
At some point we will have a nominee for President, and the same applies to candidates in all the other races, from US Senators and Congressional Representatives all the way down to the level of mayors, sheriffs, city council seats and school board members. And a lot of us will be disappointed that our candidates were not chosen. Some may take that as a personal rejection of their own ideas and beliefs.
Well, it won’t be.
What it will be is the opportunity to support and fight for the election of Democrats. Some of those candidates may not be to your liking. Some may not support all the ideas and policies you hold dear. But we will accomplish nothing if we allow petty and internecine squabbles to deflect us from the overall goal of our movement: to make this country a better, a more just, a more humane society for all its people.
Because an individual, even one elected to the presidency can only accomplish so much. And if we want to achieve our ultimate goal of improving the lives of all our citizens, if we want this “revolution” in the political landscape to occur, we must realize that its success is not dependent on any one single person.
It does depend on everyone fighting hard for our ideals, true. But it is also depends on recognizing that nothing can be accomplished alone, in isolation. We all need each other, as allies, and not as antagonists. Certainly not as enemies.
So please, push for your ideas and support those candidates who you believe can best turn those ideas into concrete accomplishments. The Democratic party needs to have a debate over its underlying principles, its priorities, the best policies to address those priorities and the best people to run as candidates for elected office.
But don’t burn bridges. Don’t turn on one another. Don’t respond with spite and ill will to those with whom you disagree, even if you are being subjected to such behavior by them. Remember what you’re fighting for and remember who is your real enemy. It’s all pretty simple when you come down to it.
That’s all. Thanks for reading.
Steven D
