Womans March Weekend

The changing of the guard has happened and our country has a new president.  It has been a strange week for me emotionally.  I have felt (and still feel) that the results of this election showed me that I needed to be in meaningful dialogue with those who don't see the world through the same lens that I do.  The majority of my friends IRL and on social media do, but there are some Trump folks that I am friends with.

What shocks me is that they aren't really interested in meaningful dialogue.  In a long thread with a friend on FB the gist of his responses was that "the election is over. Get over it."  Obviously this is not what I and a number of other respondents were saying.  We voiced our fears.  I reached out and said that I wanted to know why he felt good about the result.  What great changes did he expect and look forward to.  Crickets.  Seriously.  Just more rhetoric of getting over the election and no response to the concerns that I and others shared about health care, LGBT rights, the environment, the black community etc.

Obviously this left me disheartened.  I have pretty much always avoided talking politics and religion with my friends. I feel that people share many different interests and we don't need to agree all the time but we also don't need to make each other uncomfortable.  I have since come to feel that this is not a good stance to take.  I need to share why I am concerned for my family in a Trump presidency.  I need to respectfully share why I am opposed to a number  his ideology.  But I also believe firmly that if you do  believe that things will be better I want to know why.  And how.  Because clearly I have lived for too long in my blue state bubble and now I am faced with what seems like an incomprehensible reality.

So on the heels of that rather depressive situation came a weekend where our country protested.  So many marches in so many cities.  I had friends marching in Boston, NY, Washington, KY and OH and TX.  It was a strong and powerful message sent across our country and around the world as marches of solidarity took place in other countries as well.

It is only the beginning.  There is much work to be done.  I will find a way to be part of that work.  (My daughter had commitments on Saturday that I could not back out of and no way for her to attend them if I was not there.) But this is not, and can not be, a one off event.  Our church is all ready looking at ways to organize not just our church but with other churches in our county.  The work will not be easy.  But we will be heard and we will not stay silent.