Nature Uniting US, Elections Dividing US

(Originally posted two years ago yesterday, I came across this piece written days before the Nov. 2010 election as Middle Tennessee was recovering still from the May Day flood.  Now days prior to another election those in the Northeast begin to pick up the pieces of their lives.  How is it we allow crisis to connect us and elections to divide us?  Who really wins?)

October 30, 2010

The six month anniversary of the May flood nears as we find ourselves on the cusp of an election. I’ve been pondering these two events, one of nature, one of humankind. 

Not so long ago, one brought us together uniting us, offering an opportunity to bridge political, religious, racial and economic divides while one more recently intentionally separates us by playing on these divides.

In both, images were and are used to motivate us. During the time of the flood and immediately afterward, images prompted us to reach out and show compassion. Good will flowed as strangers helped one another.

The beneficiaries were individuals, families, communities and ultimately the human heart as we were Tennesseans at our best, baptized into a greater understanding of people around the world who have lived through natural disasters.

More recently in the weeks leading up to the election, commercial images have been used to serve up attacks, perpetuate untruths and stir mistrust in an attempt to manipulate and separate us, to get us to forget the lessons learned and experiences shared during the flood. Money flows while business and political bedfellows help one another buy America. The beneficiaries are special interest and lobbying groups and many corporations.

I’ve never really cared for the phrase ‘acts of God’ used in insurance policies referencing acts of nature such as the flood. I don’t believe in a God that ‘acts’ in this way. Yet I am mindful there is a grace to these events for they shake us and for a time awaken us empathically and remind us of what’s really important.

Crises remind us on a deep level that we are more alike than different whereas our present election system thrives on getting us to forget these differences.

Regardless of who wins Tuesday, we each have the privilege of deciding how we hold the lessons from the flood. In the privacy of our insides, we each get to decide what governs the territory of our individual heart and mind. We can choose to remember or forget the connections made and lessons learned in May.

Regardless of who wins Tuesday, we each get to decide whether to live from a place of greater awareness and love or to live in reactivity and fear.

-Dawn! The Good News Muse, 30 Oct. 2010 and again 31 Oct. 2012
dawn@imaginetheshift.com