Ahh, the sweet smell of blame and recriminations in the morning. I think it was sort of gracious of God to cast a cloud laden shadow over Binghamton yesterday. Tuesday was crisp and clear and bright, everyone rushing to the poll for a selfie, excited about exercising the right and responsibility of participating in the picking of a national icon. But then the world woke up on Wednesday and here in the northeast we had clouds and rain, and some level of weeping and gnashing of teeth. Not by me, of course. You know, Other People.
But now the sun is back in full view this morning and I’m feeling pretty cheerful. I spent a part of yesterday afternoon baking a massive German BlitzTorten (look, we might as well get ready…just kidding). I did the recipe times eight, which turned out to be a lot of cake. Way too much cake. But I’m hoping it will be enough to feed Shepherd’s Bowl. We had a couple meet at our community meal, and keep sitting together, and finally get married last month. So I said I’d make a massive celebratory cake. But I’m not decorating it because I only produce cake wrecks. I shoved it off on a friend who always makes everything look beautiful, no matter what it is.
Of course, then I had a string of terrifying dreams. I dreamt that the cake was up on a shelf and there was no way to reach it. I dreamt that I forgot to cook the rest of the meal. I dreamt that I went into my atria and took everything out and put it in the hallway and then was called away to view a car wreck. I’m sure all these dreams point to some underlying reality, that in this new Trumpian world there will be cake but there will only be cake and we won’t be able to reach it. Chaos and sorrow in other words.
The main thing, I always think, is that things are never quite as wonderful as you think they will be, nor as terrible. The one exception is war which is always worse. But in ordinary life, when you build something up in your mind, it always falls slightly short of your imagined glory. Or when you dread something terribly, it usually turns out to be bearable after all. That’s why it’s good sometimes to be surprised, and to keep your expectations, especially of yourself, fairly low.
See, most people think they are good. That God is happy with them. (That was that evangelical poll, remember?) That they are definitely going to heaven. It is other people who are evil and wrong. So when we wake up in the morning and find out that “our country is not who we thought it was” or “how could this have happened”, we probably took a wrong turn when we always thought the enemy was Out There.
Gazing at the wondrous pictures of hundreds of young Clinton supporters weeping over their loss, sobbing because they had never imagined such a possibility, I thought to myself–a parent that doesn’t early on introduce the idea of personal wrong doing, another word might be Sin, into the world view of the child is only helping that child to grow up to be someone who will endure endless disappointment. The expectations of the self being too high, the whole world becomes your Disappointing Enemy.
Acknowledging yourself as a sinner, and all the world in need of a savior, is the cheerfullest and most emotionally strengthening thing you can do. You are part of the problem. And so all other parts of the problem can be your friend. You can reach across the aisle and join hands, making a love chain of cake eating chaos producers.
Or I suppose we could spend the next four years hunkered down in grief and blame, beating back reality with every ounce of everything that we have left of us. That’s worked well the last eight years.
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