The Work of Democracy

INSPIRATION

When the noise of campaigns is stilled,when the signs have all been taken down,when the politicians and the poll workers have gone home,when the voters are back at their jobs,the work of democracy begins:To find the lost,to heal the broken,to feed the hungry,to release the prisoner,to rebuild the nations,to bring peace among the people,to make music in the heart.— “The Work of Democracy Begins,” based on Howard Thurman’s “The Work of Christmas,” as suggested and inspired by a Cottage reader and tweaked by me!

Diana Butler Bass continues to offer comfort for those of us who are shocked at the result of the election. It is daunting that half of our population would vote to elect a human being like Donald Trump, but as DBB's words above say, we know what our mission is, and it matters not who is in the White House.

Our Founding Fathers created a government for a diverse nation with built in checks and balances and a three party system, not based on Christian values but on the belief that ALL people were created equal, that they were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among those are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Their beliefs however contradicted their behavior so from the beginning our government was fraught with controversy.

However in three centuries we have advanced to understand the evils of slavery and the truth of the preamble to the Declaration of the Independence. And we have seen our government tried and tested in many ways, and yet as Maya Angelou said in her wonderful poem: Still we Rise.

So let us get up, stand tall, and live into whatever truths we can muster carrying out the work of democracy, respecting the dignity of all human beings and turning away from untruths and all that divides us.

While many Founding Fathers were raised Christian, most are considered to have held deist beliefs, meaning they believed in a creator God but rejected many traditional Christian doctrines, with prominent examples including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and James Madison; however, some like John Adams and Patrick Henry were more traditionally Christian.