Politics = Vice

Well now that is a hefty title. HOWEVER, I arrive at the point with no lightness or farce. I was visiting my dear dear friend last week, and we were talking about the candidates...and their wives. Her husband took affront to my statements and joined in with rebuttals and we embarked on a 2 1/2 hour late night conversation that transitioned from venom to respect in pretty short order. HOWEVER...it did start with venom.
Upon much reflecting, I realized that we are, in this fine nation, embarking on a voyage of nonsense, lacking pith, and only engendering disrespect and generalized nonsense. I am quite sure that many people spend their political efforts wisely, attempting to get educated about the issues, the players, the positions, so that they can land in a place that sits rightly with them. I certainly have. However, the problem is all of the above. The issues are fabricated at worst and hyper-simplified at best. The players are mere caricatures of the movements that dominate the landscape at the moment, the wind that blows their party at the time, and at worst they attempt to ride all winds all the time. The positions are invented, and sans all the nuance and subtlety that dominate that actuality of the human experience.
When one does consider the nuance and is mindful of subtlety, there is PER THE NORM no black and no white, only shades of grey that must be discussed over long hours before it is apparent that while your grey may be slightly different than mine it is still quite similar.
Years like this attempt to only highlight the differences - like clicking contrast on a digital portrait until the image becomes a Warholian grid of extremes - certainly no longer the true likeness of a human face...hardly human at all.
All this is to say that we are responsible for our path, for our choices, for our beliefs. But we are not to be held in the palm of an other's hand, told what we appear to be, when in fact we are far far different. So I am retreating from such positioning, holding gently that which I know like a baby bird in palm, relaxing into the experiences that make me unique, and trusting, trusting.
The spirit is like the wind blowing where it wants while no one knows where it comes from or where it is going. I will be like a spiritual kite, politically, blown precisely where God wills, nowhere landing but where it takes me. And it will be ours together, this truth. None different, none other, no more, no less.