Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope

I went to vote last Friday.  Just in case I am quarantined in my house or summoned to Timbuktu on election day. I want to make sure my vote is counted.
 
It’s been a tough campaign season, hasn’t it? At times the divisiveness and the messages of fear and hatred have felt overwhelming. So I remind myself, and remind you now, that we are in this for the long haul, and we’re in it together, mustering as much kindness and peace and joy and love as we can.
 
Victoria Stafford, a Unitarian Universalist minister, wrote these words in an essay some years ago. I find them appropriate now:
 
“Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope —
not the prudent gates of Optimism, which are somewhat narrower;
nor the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense;
nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness, which creak on shrill and angry hinges (people cannot hear us there; they cannot pass through);
nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of “Everything is gonna be all right.”
But a different, sometimes lonely place, the place of truth-telling,
about your own soul first of all and its condition,
the place of resistance and defiance,
the piece of ground from which you see the world both as it is and as it could be, as it will be;
the place from which you glimpse not only struggle, but joy in the struggle.
And we stand there, beckoning and calling,
telling people what we are seeing, asking people what they see.”
 
Standing with you at the gates of Hope, and hoping to see you on Sunday,