A few days ago, on November 4th, I sat on the shoulder of a quiet road and wrote about taking back the things I had surrendered over a long decade of political division: my hats, my Bible, my flag, and my voice.
The response was overwhelming. So many of you expressed a shared relief, a shared exhaustion, and a shared hunger for a community grounded in unconditional love, mutual respect, and basic human dignity. As we work to build this new fellowship—a community rooted in the tradition of the early Friends—we are striving to create a sanctuary where everyone is valued.
Yet, after re-reading what I wrote, I realized I left out the heaviest loss of all.
I spoke about symbols, but I didn’t speak about people. I didn’t speak about the empty chairs at our holiday tables. I didn’t address the broken relationships, the fractured courtships, or the quiet estrangements from family members,lifelong friends, and neighbors who embraced or enabled movements of political division.
As we look toward the future, we can no longer step around this open wound. How do we recover from moral and relational division without abandoning either compassion or conscience?
To answer that, we must look back at history, examine our faith with total honesty, and learn how to hold love and boundaries in the very same hands.
Lessons from History: Power, Lawlessness, and The Way
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