Winners and Losers

By Rev. Terry A. Davis

Delivered at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation on November 4, 2012.

Well, another presidential election is almost here. In two days, the brutal and oftentimes bitter campaigning will come to an end, Americans will go to the polls, and we will soon know who won and who lost the election.

I can’t begin to imagine the toll this campaign has taken on both presidential candidates and their families. I know it has taken its toll on me and, I imagine, on some of you. Two persons who we hope uphold our highest values and priorities have been slugging it out on the campaign trail with relentless accusations, skewed or incomplete data . . . and, in some cases, flat-out lies.

For a while, I attempted to keep up with which candidate was telling the truth about deficit reduction, unemployment, the cost of health care reform, the war in Afghanistan, and other critical matters by following the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s “Truth-o-Meter” reports.

Have you seen this? Truth-o-Meter is a project operated by PolitiFact.com and The Tampa Bay Times in which reporters and editors from the Times and affiliated media outlets fact-check statements made by President Obama and Governor Romney, members of Congress, lobbyists, and interest groups.[i] Ratings range from “True” for completely accurate statements to “Pants on Fire” – as in “liar, liar, pants on fire.”

In following the fact checks on the campaign trail, I’ve been noticing more in-between ratings, such as “Mostly True,” “Half True” and “False”, which are a discouraging commentary. As it seems that we live more and more in a sound bite world, are these half-baked truth ratings a sign that it is impossible to say something that is “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” in ten words or less? Or, do they indicate that no matter how good at heart we believe our candidates to be, they’re all prone to making juicy and provocative statements out of context to get our attention and win our votes?

As early as late Tuesday evening, we may find out who won and who lost the presidential election. And, given that Gallup and other pollsters are finding voters almost equally split in their preference for the Democrat or Republican candidate, this likely means that nearly 50 percent of our nation’s voters will lose.

With millions of persons expected to vote, that’s a lot of losers. And, we may be among them. Some of us may simply shrug our shoulders and move on. Some of us may feel frustrated, angry and deeply discouraged. And, still some of us may become skeptical and fearful – we may find ourselves questioning the system and the laws that govern it.

I believe that it’s not easy to be a loser and remain optimistic – particularly when the stakes feel as high as they often do during a presidential election. I also believe that it’s not easy to win and remain humble, as winning can sometimes unlock the door to human hubris and the belief that one now has the right to impose her or his agenda on the losing minority.

Is it possible, instead, to be a nation of hopeful losers and compassionate winners?  As we gather this morning, I would like to offer another way to think about our political battles and this unsettling business of producing winners and losers. Whatever the outcome of this election, I believe that we have the opportunity to heal and unite by putting our hearts at the center of the matter. We can do this by sharing our pain and by practicing forgiveness.

By leading from the heart, Quaker and Educator Parker Palmer believes our elected leaders can demonstrate what it means to make the difficult journey through the wilderness of polarized thinking into the land of reciprocity and reconciliation. As Unitarian Universalists, I believe we can adopt heart-centered leadership in our own communities and lives through radical acts of forgiveness and hospitality.

To understand more about what it means to lead from the heart, it helps to know what Parker Palmer means by the expression “a heart broken open.” Palmer is suggesting that heartbreak and pain are the necessary ingredients for empathetic leadership. Palmer argues that, in the case of Abraham Lincoln, it was his lifelong struggle with depression and the tragic deaths of two sons that gave Lincoln the unique ability make tough decisions during his presidency while not demonizing the enemy. He writes:

“Lincoln’s need to preserve his life by embracing and integrating his own darkness and light made him uniquely qualified to help America preserve the Union. Because he knew dark and light intimately – knew them as inseparable elements of everything human – he refused to split North and South into ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys,’ a split that might have taken us closer to the national version of suicide.”[ii]

Palmer sees Abraham Lincoln as someone whose heart was broken open by his personal pain, not broken apart. Lincoln was able to use that pain in a way that enabled him to have compassion for the Other, to hold tension creatively and to broker the common good. As history bears out, this doesn’t mean that Lincoln made popular decisions or refrained from using coercion to push his agenda forward.

As Palmer suggests, Lincoln refused to see the Civil War in terms of winners and losers, but rather, as a fight for preservation. Palmer notes that in Lincoln’s second inaugural address, the president appealed for “malice toward none” and “charity for all.” He writes:

In his appeal to a deeply divided America, Lincoln points to an essential fact of our life together: if we are to survive and thrive, we must hold its divisions and contradictions with compassion, lest we lose our democracy.”[iii]

“We must hold divisions and contradictions with compassion” . . . how do leaders do that? How do we do that?

Some of the divisions and contradictions that we see playing out in this year’s presidential campaign bring up some of our most deeply cherished values and our worst fears.

For example, whether or not to uphold laws that permit reproductive choice, whether or not to support laws that legalize marriage for all regardless of sexual orientation, whether or not to allow undocumented students to finish their studies and live and work in America, whether or not to require all individuals to have health coverage – these and so many other issues evoke such intense feelings of right and wrong, it seems that there is nothing that can move us toward a civilized discussion and acceptable solutions.

Is the hope that we can avoid making democratic politics a battlefield of winners and losers . . . the hope that we can find peaceable solutions . . . are these hopes realistic? How can we approach difficult conversations in our personal lives and in our communities . . . difficult conversations where we find ourselves in painful opposition with family members, neighbors, or colleagues? How can we approach these seemingly impossible moments with hearts broken by pain, guided by empathy and inspired by creativity?

While I don’t believe there are easy answers to these questions, I do believe that we can continue to find inspiration among hearts-broken-open people . . . people who courageously hold their pain and use it to the betterment of themselves and society.

One of my personal heroes is The Rev. Desmond Tutu, whose heart, broken by apartheid in South Africa, led him to become an international voice in the fight against racism, AIDS, poverty, sexism, and homophobia. I had the honor of meeting and talking with him several years ago when I co-chaired a civil rights event in Atlanta.

He was our guest speaker, and he told a story about being a young man walking down a street one day in Johannesburg. As he turned the corner, he walked past a restaurant and glanced in the window. Inside, he saw a white man sitting at a table looking back at him through the window. At the time, most Johannesburg restaurants and hotels in white areas were not allowed to admit blacks except as staff.

“At that moment,” said Rev. Tutu in his light-hearted voice, “as I looked at that man in the restaurant, I realized that we are all part of a big circle. Some of us think we are inside the circle and that others are outside the circle. But we are all part of the same circle.”

Rev. Tutu said that, in that moment, he knew that there was no difference between the man in the restaurant and himself . . . that they were both inside the circle and connected by their humanity. Rev. Tutu’s eventual fierce opposition to apartheid and his global work for human rights, it seems, are rooted in his understanding that there are no winners and losers . . . that we’re all in this together . . . that we have more in common with one another than we realize.

Rev. Tutu also reminded us that evening that we needed to embrace an African humanist ethic known as Ubuntu. Ubuntu, he says, is the essence of being human. Quoting from his writings, Rev. Tutu explains ubuntu this way:

Ubuntu says that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can’t be human all by yourself.

When you have this quality – ubuntu – you are known for your generosity. We think

of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas we are connected and what we do affects the whole world.

When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.[iv]

This quality of ubuntu – recognizing that we are connected in the common circle of humanity – seems to be an obvious starting place from which to begin a dialogue with those whom we dislike, disagree with or fear.

Because, when we view the person on the other side of an argument as the stranger or the “alien other,” we can quickly put them outside the circle of humanity and even dehumanize them. We may forget that – like us – they want health, happiness, security, and other affirming life experiences. We may forget that – like us – they have children to raise and bills to pay. It may be that the less we know about one another, the easier it is to forget that we are so much alike.

So, in thinking about these words from Rev. Tutu – and reflecting on Parker Palmer’s invitation to live with our hearts broken-open – it seems we have some important work to do.

We can begin by recognizing that as long as there is life there will be tension. If our heart truly is the center of Self . . .  if it is a place where democracy lives . . . then we can have faith that our heart is capable of holding this tension.

So let us open our hearts up. Let us trust that we can hold in our hearts those things that disturb us and challenge us. Let us trust our hearts to wrestle with very hard questions, perhaps for a very long time. Let us trust our hearts to make room for different people, different personalities, and different points of view.

By doing so, we’ll find that each of us carries only part of the truth and, therefore, must listen to others. We’ll find that we will grow in humility and in peace. We’ll find that that there are no winners and losers. There is only us.

My hope for you and me is that we can live with hearts broken-open. My hope is that we can use the compassion and receptiveness we find there to save one another from isolation and darkness.

May our broken-open hearts bring us back into the circle . . . back into the light of our shared humanity. May it be so. Amen.