Last night, our parish decided to add a prayer to the list of prayers we say at every mass. This prayer was for us to give us wisdom to choose the candidate that would best bring about the kingdom of God. They added a bit about choosing the candidates that would serve the needs of the people and not look to be served.

I was struck by two things there. First, none of the candidates were mentioned by name. No parties were mentioned as the preferred party. That was obviously left up to us. Secondly, I know some candidates immediately came to mind and that is particularly true when the idea of serving vs. being served was mentioned. I also know that everyone else in the congregation had the same amount of certainty, but their certainty might be different than mine.

This brings us to the real topic of the day. What do we do on November 6th? Obviously, we can assume that the results will not be known immediately because right wing activists won’t allow the results to be clear by that point. I hate to sound like a partisan hack, but the right is the only group claiming the elections are rigged and fighting the results.

We are scared. We are frightened. We want to figure out how to defend ourselves. Some of us will likely flee to another country. Some will buy a firearm or some other tool to defend their home in the worst of cases. Others may attempt to move off the grid to protect their family.

We do this because we are scared. We are scared because of the rampant disinformation that we see about everything. I’ve gone over that too. If you constantly are bombarded with bullshit it is hard not to get activated by it. One of two things is bound to happen. Either you start to believe it or you know it is wrong and hearing it repeated makes you more and more angry.

When I go through confirmation classes I usually read something called “The Missing Piece” by Shel Silverstein. Essentially, the idea is that each of us is broken in some way. We aren’t quite whole. However, that brokenness comes with advantages in the story. You are able to stop and smell the roses or talk to a bug. When you are complete you can’t do those things.

Yet, the moral to the story is that this brokenness only gets healed when we find the missing piece. That missing piece is other people. The hardest lesson to learn and the most important lesson to learn is that there are truly very few bad people in this world. Most of them are just not a fit for us in that moment. Being unfit for us doesn’t make them bad. It just means they are a better fit for someone else.

Good leaders understand this basic principle. We are flawed when we separate ourselves and isolate ourselves. We are perfect when we work together. The tragedy of the last decade is that we have allowed someone to divide us and isolate us. We each carry some responsibility for putting ourselves in this predicament and we each carry some responsibility to get ourselves out of this hole.

It starts by hopefully moving on from this period on November 6th. As I sit here, I don’t know what the end result will be. Either we will start putting the pieces back together or we will find our missing pieces somewhere else. This current America cannot stand. It will not stand. We will be different on November 6th. Whether it is for the best or not remains to be seen.