Our gratitude to Mike Goss for bringing the message last week. I was at our farm in Paoli and Jackson was down with Covid in Richmond, after attending a Quaker pastor’s conference at Quaker Haven, which I was supposed to attend but couldn’t because of a funeral. Otherwise I would have gotten Covid too and would have had to spend five days in quarantine. When I had Covid it was a ten-day quarantine, ten wonderful days in the mid-summer of 2022, lying in a hammock in our screenhouse, reading, with Madeline peering at me through the screen door every hour on the hour to make sure I was still alive.
“How are you, Papa?” she would ask. “Can I get you anything?”
“Ice cream would be nice,” I would say, and she would run inside to tell Joan I wanted ice cream, then run back outside to tell me I couldn’t have it because of my diabetes.
But on the tenth day, to celebrate my recovery, Joan and Madeline drove to the Dairy Queen and brought me home a Chocolate Brownie Extreme Blizzard, which I am persuaded will be the standard fare of heaven, where diabetes will be no more. Streets of gold and Dairy Queen Blizzards. It’s in the Bible. Trust me on that. For those ten days, I lived for that connection, of seeing my granddaughter’s face through the screen door and hearing her voice, inquiring about my well-being. It was the best medicine possible, my own little redheaded happy pill.
There are two creation stories in the Bible. In the first story, God looks at man and says, “I think I can do better,” so took a rib from the man and made a woman. It’s a little-known story. It doesn’t get told nearly as much as the other story, when God looked down and saw Adam in his boxer shorts, unshaven, watching television and drinking beer and said, “It is not good for a person to be alone. I’ll make them a companion.” So along came Eve, and Adam shaved and got dressed every day, made his bed, and gave away his television set to a family down the road, the Barbarians, which is how they got that way, while the descendants of Adam read books, formed orchestras, and invented the Dairy Queen Blizzard. It’s all there in the Old Testament. You really should read it more.
Therefore, among the many titles given to God, we can also add The Inventor of Connection, the Parent of Community. In times of change we must not forget the imperative and importance of connection, of resisting with all our might the urge to disconnect, to distance ourselves from others, the temptation to retreat and hide away. I know how these things work, and you do too. If this week’s election does not go as you hope it will, if you voted for one candidate and the other one wins, the temptation to hide away, to lick your wounds, to pull a blanket over your head and disappear will be great.
In 2008, when Barack Obama won the Presidency, a neighbor down the road told me he was leaving America and moving to Costa Rica. He was done. Over it.
In 2016, when Donald Trump was elected, another neighbor told me he was through with America. “I can’t stay here,” he told me. I’m moving to Costa Rica.”
I said, “Oh, you don’t want to go there. Everyone mad about the 2008 election moved there. Stay put.”
In times of change, we must learn to connect, not disconnect. It is okay to retreat for a moment to lick our wounds, it is not okay to disengage, to think the world and our nation will be improved by our absence. The world is never made better by our retreat from it. Weep through the night, if you must. But awaken the next morning, adorn yourself in the garments of decency, ready to stand by the side of justice. Awaken the next morning determined all the more to include the excluded, to welcome the stranger, to defend the weak, to work for good until the bad is exhausted, to speak without fear, to love without limit. To connect, not disconnect.
When I was studying to be a pastor, I had to take a bunch of classes in a bunch of different things—Bible, history, theology, spiritual formation, languages, counseling, family therapy, education, preaching, writing, sociology, and, in the event I ever worked with youth, ping-pong. It was great fun. Four years of learning something new every day. Taught by brilliant people who had dedicated their lives to the moral and intellectual growth of their students.
But the most important thing I ever learned in those four years was taught to me by a woman in the Quaker meeting I was pastoring. A bus driver. Harriet Combs. The meeting had done something I disagreed with and in the white-hot heat of righteous indignation common to the inexperienced and idealistic I told Harriet I was going to resign and pastor another church. She asked me what I hoped to accomplish by leaving, and I said I hoped to shock the meeting into doing the right thing.
She laughed. And then Harriet said this, and I have never forgotten it. “You cannot change a community by being outside of it.”
I have made no secret of my political preference. I would be no kind of pastor if I failed to articulate Christian ideals. It is my duty as a Quaker pastor to speak plainly on issues of morality. If you’re looking for a pastor who’ll sit on the fence, you’ll not find it with me.
Nevertheless, no matter who wins this Tuesday, no matter who wins the White House for the next four years, in this 14 billion-year-old universe, let’s you and I awaken on Wednesday morning all the more determined to bring justice, all the more determined to love and not hate, all the more determined to bless and not curse, all the more determined to remain a vital voice in the community, nation, and world we seek to change, all the more determined to connect and not disconnect.
When I was a kid, I used to sing along out loud to songs on the radio. Sometimes I’d get the lyrics wrong. For years, I thought the song Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival, had the words, “There’s a bathroom on the right,” and not “There’s a bad moon on the rise.” I could never figure out why CCR was singing about bathrooms.
In case you’re lyric-impaired like me, I want to read the lyrics to the chorus of the Eagles song Hole In the World we started worship with today.
There’s a hole in the world tonight
There’s a cloud of fear and sorrow
There’s a hole in the world tonight
Don’t let there be a hole in the world tomorrow
Friends, step up, not back. Connect, don’t disconnect. There might well be a hole in the world tonight. Don’t let there be a hole in the world tomorrow.