When we got into the car to go, I asked my twelve-year-old daughter, “Do you know why we are marching today?”
“To protest Donald Trump?” she replied.
I explained that some people may be going for that reason, but that was not the reason I was going.
“Are there any positive reasons you can think of for why we are marching?” I asked her.
She went on to name several things Donald Trump had said about women. “I guess those are all still anti-Trump things,” she said.
“I am marching because I am a mother, I am a sister, I am a daughter, I am a wife, and I am a survivor. That’s what I am saying if anyone asks me,” I told her.
I had already thought through this question. As a pastor of a church with people who have diverse political affiliations I am committed to being able to minister to everyone in my congregation. I have served churches in which my political views are in the minority and I have served churches in which my political views are in the majority. Both have challenging aspects, but nothing that I have experienced previously in terms of partisanship feels like it relates to what is happening in the United States right now. Those old partisan dynamics were difficult to navigate—it took discipline, but not one ounce of moral compromise.
The decision to march was not a partisan one, it was a moral one, and it was a spiritual one. If I didn’t march it I would be listening to a frightening interlocutor—and his name is despair.
Party affiliations are not creating the alienation at the root of what is happening. The challenges are much more painful—and if I stay silent or still in the face of this situation I would not be doing my job as a pastor or a mother. Continue reading “Do You Know Why We Are Marching? by Marcia Mount Shoop”
Even though I encountered wisdom literature when specializing in Hinduism during my Religious Studies doctoral program, through reading the works of Christian female mystics and the liberation theologies of feminist spiritual guides, it took a book I never encountered in my academic studies to give me a spiritual foundation that feels complete after my departure from Christianity: Eckhart Tolle’s 
If you are like me, you are still reeling from the election results in the United States – trying to make sense of it, while at the same time going through the steps of mourning. As I write this, it is difficult to call our country United – because it is anything but. In reality, we have become the Divided States of America – and worse, we have had friendships lost and detachments with relatives over this election. And I guess I could say, what’s even worse – we learned about the bigotry and viewpoints of people we used to consider friends or even learned this about family members, even spouses.
I am the mother of three adult children. I am also the mother of an addict living the nightmare of denial and the consequence of said addiction. Like many, my family of origin is riddled with alcoholics and addicts. I learned to “detach” (not always in love) from their demons, drawing clear lines in the sand for my own future. I thought a geographical relocation in another state would give me the distance and perspective needed to live my own life absent the insanity substance abuse can bring. When I discovered my spouse of then seven years was an addict my world fell apart. For the life of me I could not understand how this could happen—again. What did I miss?
