Meeting Change Head On

Yesterday’s post marked a change in thinking for me. It might be a small change but all change comes from steps small and large. One doesn’t know which step will take him far or toward a dead end.

Dead ends are frequent. Rarely do we know they are dead end at the time so the path is taken and we wind up nowhere, really. That’s when we confront the dead end and try to make sense of it.

I recall many years ago receiving a phone call from a fundraiser for the Republican Party. After all I was an active member of the party and donated money, time and energy to it. But this time the woman’s voice simply stated that, “surely I want to support the conservative party of the United States.” I responded, “the Republican Party isn’t the Conservative Party.” And she countered with, “Oh, certainly it is.” I told her that was news to me and said I would withdraw from the party and hung up.

I thought about that phone call for years. When exactly had my party of Lincoln become the party of rabid conservatives? Conservatives were John Birch supporters, extremists, fear mongers and anti immigration, anti civil rights, anti Catholic, anti Jewish, and more, much more. They were not warm and fuzzy people who struggled to understand the real world and how to be relevant in it. The rest of us I thought were doing that. Evidently I was wrong about many of them.

Getting along with diverse peoples takes patience, love, intellectual curiosity, exposure to vulnerability and other risks. It is hard work. It requires reading and research. After those efforts it needs long hours of discussion with friends and trusted allies. Those discussions are part of the search for meaning and truth. History is a story of people engaging the present with the tools of the past in order to build the future. It is an unfolding.

The unfolding uncovers new information. It uncovers new meanings. It is a process of growth. Each of us must be open to that growth if we are to be people of the present and future. We are in the process and part of the process. To be there requires us to be flexible and open to fresh understanding.

Doing this is exciting. It is rewarding. It is timeless. It is what caring people do who hope to be relevant.

Best if we don’t go into the process with preconceived notions. Being vulnerable means expecting to be informed with new information and new ideas. It is healthy and energizing.

This journey does not describe conservatism at any point. The definition of ‘conservative’ is rooted in the past and long-held tenets and beliefs. The trouble begins when those folks – otherwise good and sensible people – work diligently to make sense of the new and the pending future in terms that are old and stale. Shifts in meaning take place and suddenly history is rewritten and old tenets become twisted. For example, American history is rewritten to assert that colonial America was Christian, protestant and mostly puritan.

In fact it was not. We had as many freed prisoners among the settlers as we did pilgrims. We had indentured servants, too. Slavery was known at the time because it was a major world trade industry sponsored by many British companies. The American colonies were not pure and religious and morally right. They were, in fact, a product of their times. Best we remember that.

Freedom of religion was a hope of the colonists and so they made certain it was written into the constitution so that they would be free to practice their religious beliefs without interference by anyone or any government. They were not seeking a government of or for religion. Freedom from interference does not make a necessity for government to be involved in religion. Just the opposite, frankly.

You would never know that today. Conservatives foist this idea on the nation that we are Christian and church going or ought to be. They are wrong about this. We are capable of making our own decisions on this matter and leave others to their own designs as well.

This is an important issue for us to deal with. Conservatives apparently think that if we don’t agree with them on this point then we are un-American and unpatriotic. I disagree with them on both points.

I find it funny that Trump states he is religious and Christian. Who knows? He says things because he thinks others want him to say these things. But it takes more than saying it to make it the truth. Same with Rubio and Cruz. They are immigrants and children of immigrants. Why then are they against immigration and an orderly process of welcoming newcomers to our borders? How did they become so turned around?

If this is the face of conservatism, God help us!

It would be better if we truly believe in and care for other people as we would hope they would care for us. Government is not the enemy; it is the tool we build to do important work the rest of us alone cannot do. Now that is conservative in my book. An old concept that guides us well long into the future.

February 23, 2016