By: JANA GREENE

We worked so hard to come by this love. Most of us, anyway. Maybe you – like me – have gone through a season of spiritual confusion, unable to justify a cruel creator to a loving spiritual force. And perhaps you have reached the same conclusion; that everything we’d been taught was dogma. That nobody knows better than we average people do, and that’s terrifying. Maybe you landed on love, like me. Scrap everything else, and act lovingly, like it’s the only thing that matters. Because it is.

This world is rumbling and laboring, every contraction pulsing to either bring us closer together or farther apart. We can all feel it, but we don’t all feel it the same. I rarely quote scripture anymore, but 1 Corinthians 13:1 comes to mind. It says that if you have “all the answers” but don’t have love, you are like a clanging gong – making a bunch of noise, but without any expression of love.

There is so much noise in this world. The gong is deafening, the drumbeats ever closer. The way we are treating one another is shameful. We correct our children when they are hateful to another person. We reward our leaders for it We say, “Here, have more power!” And how do we explain to our grandchildren that we should love our neighbors as ourselves, if grown-ass adults acting a fool on the world stage?

I simply cannot believe the vitriol this political season has wrought us. We people in high places, but also, we average folk. I came here to write about ways we can perhaps rally together, but it’s too late for that. Cult mentality has made certain no common sense is required. Every time we butt up against absolutes, we reap the worst in us. Time and time again, history has shown what happens when a small-minded, evil man collects cult members for his gain. Time and time again, the name of God rolls off the tongues of serpents. Always, there are followers who would die for the cause of a serpent’s dream. And so they do, perpetuating false righteousness.

I lost it all to side with love. Everything I thought I knew had to go in my spiritual fire sale. In churchy talk, they call it being “refined.” It cost me a lot, to come to the conclusion that love always wins. And it’s super easy to set that concept ablaze too, since there is so little evidence around us right now. But we can’t, you see. Some of us are banded together to lasso the hands of the doomsday clock and keep it from ticking further. But others of us have roped the hand from the other side, pulling toward the point of kablooey. There is so much at stake.

You’ll be told we all want the same thing, but that’s just another lie. We most certainly do not. I would like no part of throwing away the rights of others. I do not believe in withholding school lunches from children. And as a cancer / chronic illness patient, I know with certainty that a country that can afford to send billions of dollars to obscure causes half a world away can afford healthcare for all of its citizens. I don’t believe in demonizing whole demographics of human beings.

We are a real cocky bunch, singing about how God shed his grace on thee. I don’t believe God shed any more grace on us than anyone else. In our haughtiness, we have become puffed up with pride about ourselves. “MURICA. Greatest country on earth! This is God’s country! God favors us! (Wherever did we get the idea that God, in his infinite wisdom and love, sanctioned the thievery of an entire continent, the slaughter or decimation of its native people, and determined that our ill-begotten land is a gift from the Almighty.

Maybe that cockiness is part of the reason we are in this pickle.

And see, the funny thing is – I care about these things because I prayed that God would break my heart for what breaks his heart. And damn if he didn’t. He’s a little poky with a lot of requests, in my humble opinion, but not this one. And it’s ruined the person I was. And I’m glad of it. Because that refining took place without being anesthetized by church and political intervention. It was a wilderness experience, becoming who I am. Me and God. Mano a mano, on the mat.

And right now, less than a week until the election, I am feeling a wind blow in from the wilderness again. It certainly is a strange wind, like the breath of a laboring mother. Elections and contractions. Raging and rumbles. Ugliness of weaponized-biblical proportions. Hate.

I don’t know who you’ll vote for, Dear Reader. It is frankly none of my business, and I have no desire to make it my business. But as I sit here at 4 a.m. tapping onto the page what is haunting my mind, I do ask you to search your heart. I know the gong is loud, and I know that drumbeats are getting closer. And it would be easy – justifiable even! – to join in the war cries.

I know people are giving you ample reason to hate, and I know that hate is absolutely trending right now. Like hating is the baseline sentiment., and it’s awful. It seems to be running circles around love, and love – swelling and hopeful – is sitting dormant. But listen. Maybe love is waiting for hate to exhaust itself, and maybe that’s part of the process too. The haters don’t have all the answers; and they are hoping you won’t notice.

It may be too late to rally together, but it’s never too late to get into a quiet space, invite Divinity to show up, ask her to reveal her spark in you, and go forth into the dark places of a hurting world with it. It’s all we can do.

God,

Let us be heart-searchers and let us find love for others we didn’t know we had.

Let us be peacemakers, in that we prefer light to darkness.

Let us love people who think differently than we, with no political addendum attached.

May we be refined into our purest selves.

Amen.