For families divided by politics, gathering together this holiday season provides both challenges and opportunities
I worry about the holidays this year. My relatives are an eclectic bunch, pretty evenly split—to use crude and somewhat useless political labels—between the Left and Right; our religious diversity includes a Catholic (me), Mormons, evangelicals, United Church of Christ members and a few who are unaffiliated. Throw in my surrogate family (that’s a story for another time) and you add Presbyterians, Jews and Buddhists. As we gather around our family table and share letters and cards this post-election holiday season, I will be looking for opportunities to be a healing force.
My family is like millions of others in the United States who come together this time of year for the holidays and struggle to put their passionate differences aside for a few hours. This Thanksgiving will find supporters of McCain and Obama—and a fair number of Clintonites whose Obama support was begrudging—gathering to share a family meal.
Of course, every election has winners and losers and there is always disappointment for some. But this election has been different for two reasons. First, it’s a major shift—generationally and ideologically—that has left many feeling left out of the party, so to speak. Second, this has been one of the uglier presidential campaigns in modern history. There are plenty of hurt feelings all around. A lot of fear got stirred up.
In couples counseling, it’s an axiom that the most toxic thing to a relationship is not when the partners disagree, or even fight, but when they stop respecting each other. For several generations now, there has been little trust and respect in the political sphere. Both sides have demonized the other, have assumed ill motives on their opponents’ parts.
But of all relationships, the deepest and oldest, next to our relationship with God, is family. So, how sad when distrust and lack of respect attacks relationships with literal brothers and sisters, our own families.
Truly listening
My Catholic faith teaches me is that there is that of God in everyone, that all are my brothers and sisters. The basis is to see everyone through love; look past surface differences, past things that annoy and anger us, to that of God in them. Each of us is a flawed silly creature doing our best to make sense of the world.
One of the traps of politics is that it’s so easy to entrench oneself in a particular camp or philosophy, surrounded by like-minded people. To never listen to the other side. That will be a challenge for some of us who gather at table this holiday season, no doubt.
[Read the rest of Forming A More Perfect Union at bustedhalo.com.]
