A Post-Election Meditation

When I led the service at the Unitarian Church of Quincy, Illinois on the Sunday after the election, I read this meditation (after apologizing to anybody who was feeling happy that morning).

When something bad and unexpected happens, it hurts.

That pain is part of the mind’s normal functioning, its healthy process of keeping order. Those buzzing expectations of things that now are not going to happen need to be switched off and unplugged. Hopes that have become hopeless need to be boxed up and returned to storage. Through this process, space is made for new plans and new hopes and new expectations, even if we can't yet imagine what they’re going to be.

And while all this is happening, we hurt.

 It’s tempting not to let this process play out. It’s tempting to skip past the period of adjustment and jump straight into new action. It’s tempting to skip past the time of hurting and leap into anger at those we blame for our misfortune.

Sometimes it’s even tempting to turn that anger on ourselves, to goad ourselves into ever-deeper levels of guilt and recrimination: “If I had done this. If I hadn’t done that. Why did I let my hopes get so high? Shouldn't I have known better?”

And while we’re running in circles, and raging, and recriminating, that inner work remains undone.

So right now, let’s take a moment to sit with our pain and disappointment. Not goading it on, not telling it to go away, not trying to jump over it. That pain has work to do. Let that work be done.

Someday, maybe sooner than you think there will be a time for new plans, a time for new action, and even a time for new hopes. But all that will happen much better, after the debris has been cleared away.