My retreat from politics

When I Sounded the Retreat from Politics

Part Two of Retreating from and Returning to Blogging

By Dan McDonald

 

            In my previous blog I described how I sounded the retreat from writing during this recent Lenten season.  In this blog I will describe how I earlier retreated from politics and how that retreat led me to see life and politics differently.  My retreat from politics was not intentional.  I gradually grew discouraged and tired of politics.  I heard pastors, politicians, and co-workers describing our presidential election of 2012 as the most important in American history.  I had voted in every election since 1976 and expected to continue to vote. On Election Day I planned to vote when my work day ended.  But I was tired not only from work but of politics.  So I went home and took a nap.  After that it was like I no longer had a dog in the political hunt.  I moved from one county to another and didn’t bother to register to vote in my new house.  I suppose I was shirking my civic responsibility, but what started to take place is that having no dog in the hunt, I could listen to others speak without my need to feel defensive.  I listened and for the first time I heard things that made some sense from the people who voted against the way I had always voted. My mindset about politics changed.

            I began to think how many of us choose our political perspectives like we choose our sports teams, by symbol and image rather than by watching the legislation like sausage being made.  When I was a kid I was sort of torn between two favorite teams.  We sort of liked to pull for the underdog in our family, so I became for that reason a New York Mets’ fan and it was rewarded when Seaver, Koosman, Agee and Jones won it all in their miracle year.  I was also a Giants fan because I loved watching Willie Mays make his basket catch of fly balls with his glove next to his belt.  There was also the high-kicking Juan Marichal whose leg rose almost straight up in the air when he threw hard and fast out of the windup.  There was also Willie McCovey, who hit towering long homers bringing out tape measures checking the distance.  They were the Three-M's of the Giants.  I suppose I am thinking of them because I plan to go to California this summer, and even if the Giants don’t play in Candlestick any more, I will be sitting in their new park looking on a field where I will envision Mays, McCovey, and Marichal.  We often look at politics the same way.  One person likes the team that stands for individual rights, free enterprise, and limited government.  The other person likes the team that stands for equality, the working man, and progress.  But no one pays much attention to how legislation gets passed.

            My perception of humanity and government changed after I retreated to the irresponsible non-voting part of the citizenry.  I began to try to envision humanity from a Christian perspective existing as created in God’s image.  I thought of God existing as Trinity; as one indivisible God existing in three persons.  I thought of man therefore existing in the multiplicity of billions of human beings, each person unique and distinct from one another; and yet together each of us shares equally in our humanity shared with the first Adam and in our redemption shared in the second Adam.  As John Donne described it “no man is an island entire of itself . . . but a part of the main.”  As this perspective filled my vision of human life my previous view of right and left seemed to be a comical piece of stick art sarcastically being set forth as a serious expression of humanity’s life, energy, and common will.

            If we imagine the continuity of God’s revelation from Sinai to Pentecost we catch a glimpse of what this truly means.  Enshrined upon Sinai’s stone tablets is one sentence guarding the sanctity of the individual and his property rights, “Thou shalt not steal.”  But following Pentecost the yearning of redeemed humanity was expressed in a simple statement of how they held all things in common.  I don’t believe it was because they were commanded to hold all things in common.  I believe they did so because the Eucharist, or Holy Communion, informed them that they were one people, one loaf, one body, one blood redeemed one and all in the precious body and blood of Jesus Christ.  Thus they looked upon one another with the freshness of faith and said “I belong to you in Christ so what is mine is thine.”  No one stole, coerced, or manipulated them from a pulpit to force a life in community, but each gave the other not only what they owned but the wholeness of their beings; who they were and not just what they owned.  Because the Eucharist informed them they together were one.

            Because I retreated I came to see things from a different perspective.  God, in Christ, is redeeming not just human beings but also humanity.  He saves the entirety of our being human including reorganizing how we seek to move forward in societies with our neighbors.  So while I will not often blog about politics, if I do present a blog on politics, I want it to be a blog that helps present a view of this sort of understanding of politics.    I expect I will soon register to vote once more, but I never want to go back to how it was when I used to vote.