Sunday, November 13, 2022
Sunday Reflection: Voting
Like many of you, I voted on Tuesday. Though I appreciate the need to allow early voting, I like to do it in person, in part because I find it to be a moving and emotional experience, this little bit of agency in creating our world, and I like to do it among my neighbors.
This year there was a table of earnest looking young people sitting at the tables where you check in and get your ballot, in place of the senior citizens I usually find there. It was great to see them there-- they were not only voting but helping others to do so! That's a good sign.
I walk the ballot over to a booth and fill in the little bubbles. Then I check to make sure I filled in the right bubbles. Then I color in any tiny blank spot in my bubbles. Then I walk the ballot over to the machine that counts the votes. Then I walk outside into the cold air and breathe deeply.
There are people I know who don't vote because they don't think it matters-- it almost never happens that an election is decided by one vote, right?
Sure... but that's not how I feel.
I love going into the forest. It's full of trees and in a truly wild place it seems to go on forever. No one tree makes it a forest or beautiful.
But I still want to be a tree, to be a part of the beauty of that forest.
Being the most important voter-- the one that makes the difference in an election all by myself-- is a strange goal for those of us who believe in a God that makes a forest, and six billion of us.
