I am writing this a few days before Election day, November 3rd, and I don't know how this election will turn out. You may be reading this relieved, heartbroken, or simply exhausted from refreshing the news to see where the votes have landed. But whatever the results, we are going to need healing. The question is what kind of healing.
Does healing mean we go back to the way things were, or create something new? I understand the longing for normal, but I have to ask: normal for whom? For many of our neighbors, including immigrant families here in Orange County, queer and trans kids, communities of color, and people on the front lines of a changing climate, "the way it was" was never whole. In the Japanese art of kintsugi, a broken bowl is mended with gold. It is not returned to its old self, and the cracks are not hidden. It becomes something new, more beautiful for its honest history. That is the kind of transformation our faith calls us toward.
And it begins with telling the truth. James Baldwin wrote, "Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced." Truth telling is how a wound gets cleaned, and it is the first step toward justice, which is simply love made public. This is not truth as a weapon or a way to win the argument at Thanksgiving dinner. It is truth spoken with love, clear enough to name harm and kind enough to refuse to give up on one another. So vote if you haven't, and then, whatever happens, come be with your people. On the days we can't find hope and healing on our own, we borrow some from each other.
With love,
Rev. Sian
Rev. Sian Wiltshire is Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church's minister. Please feel free to reach out and say hello! She can be reached by email, revsian@ocuuc.org, or by church phone at (714) 556-2882 (x302).