“There is no way to Peace. The way is Peace.”
— A. J. MUSTE

As early as Kindergarten, every Grammar School Class I remember began with the Pledge of Allegiance:
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America…”
Even today, I take that pledge very seriously.
It never occurred to any of us then that there might come a day when we would be somehow Less United.
Yet here we are, at Election 2016.

I want to Show Love and Respect for Every One of God’s Creatures.
I want to see the Good in People.
I want to Live in a World that is Peaceful and Brimming Over with Beauty and Love and Rampant Kindness.
I am Imperfect — very much so — but these are the Ideals toward which I strive.
 I am not worried that DONALD tRUMP will win.
No.
That won’t happen.
I have enough Faith in the People of these United States that those who would condone his behavior or find it in any way Acceptable do not outnumber those of us who understand that this is not an acceptable message to send to the World
To send to our Children
To send to One Another.
There is no problem there.
We will have our first Woman President.

I do worry about his incendiary threats of violence,
And his inciting others to his Rage and Madness, Insanity, and Lurching Disrespect.
But I have no doubt that the Majority of Citizens of this Country and this World oppose such treatment of Other People.
I have Faith that we will come through on Tuesday!

My concern is what to do with those who Vote for tRUMP when I am sitting across the Table from them at Christmas Dinner.

There are people in my Life who will vote for tRUMP.
And I must learn Forgiveness
Yet Again, at this stage of Life,
I must Learn it, as if for the very first time…

Oh, I see it all over FaceBook.
“UNFRIEND ME!”
“UNFRIEND ME!”
Would that it were that easy!
But these are Real People
with whom I have Real Relationships…
What to Do!

DONALD TRUMP is an Aberration!
He is not the Voice of America.
He is the Voice of Dissatisfaction
Divisiveness
Hatred
Belittling
Misogyny
Racism
Xenophobia
Ingratitude
Unkindness…
And if you are Voting for him as your Representative to Public Office,
Then You must, on some Level, Believe in those things.
If that is the Case, I wish you Healing.
I wish you Love.
I shall Pray For You, as I pray for my own Broken Soul.
Because these are Heavy Burdens for a Soul to Carry —
These are Malignant Personal Beliefs to Hold.
But I refuse to Believe that these ideas represent this Country as a Whole, or the Majority of its People.
It doesn’t.
You Don’t.

I understand your Anger.
I understand your Hatred.
I grew up Gay in the Seventies.
I am no Stranger to Anger and Animosity and People Hating me for no other reason than who and what I am.
I saw First-Hand how that never solved anything.
It never helped me,
and it actually did Damage to those who were doing the Hating.
Hating does that.
I watched these people, over the years, shrivel: their Spirits grew sick as the Culture shifted to its inevitable Enlightenment — of Acceptance, of Kindness, of Love.
Love Always Wins!

Posted on FaceBook — a Bumper Sticker on a Car in Orlando, site of the Gay Massacre at Pulse Night Club only four months ago

I saw this posted on FaceBook in retaliation, a few days later. But really, it doesn’t solve anything.

And so, if you are one who supports the outspoken Hatred of this man,
When you Lose, what shall you do with your Hatred?
It is not like a KittyCat that you can keep in your House.
It won’t use a LitterBox.
Hatred is never Tame.
It is more like a Jaguar. It will attack you and make a feast of your bloody offal.
It cannot be contained.
What will you do?

The Healing that is needed is not something that will be decided on November 8^th.
This Mess will not have gone away when we wake up on Wednesday Morning.
Of course tRUMP said at this last debate that he would not agree to accept the outcome.
To do so would have implied some modicum of Dignity,
some sort of Respect.
He has no Respect.
For Anyone.
He has shown that Time and Time Again.
He does not respect me.
He does not respect you.
He does not respect himself.

Still and All, it is essential that You and I Respect one another.
And that requires that, somehow, I must find something to Respect about You and Your Humanity — No Less Flawed than my Own.
I must find a way to Live with you as a part of the Human Race
Because whether I like it or not, you are.
And I am.
We are in this Race Together!
I must somehow find the Love in my Heart to be a Respectful Loving Human Being,
even in the face of Hatred rocketed —
like a Tornado implausibly ripping Houses from the earth and whipping them to the top of the Sky —
And those of you in my Life who have chosen to join in this fleeting upsurge,
Seemingly blind to its consequential Gruesome Plummet.

I don’t want to Unfriend You.
I want to Understand You.
I want to Help you.
I want to contribute whatever I can to the Healing of the Human Race,
this Planet,
the U.S.A.,
and US.
I must somehow commit to waking up on the morning of Wednesday November 9^th, 2016,
and remembering You!

Mike Ross’ Wonderful Work

I shall be in a State of Jubilation, as the United States of America will have its first Woman President.
Just Like that moment when these United States had their first Person of Color as President, I will feel like it has Always Been there,
as if it had in fact Happened Years Ago,
and I shall have a tear streaming down my cheek just like OPRAH —
I shall be thinking of all of the Children of this Country for Years to Come who will never have to Live without an Example of someone of their Gender (or Color) in the Highest Office in the Land!
When I was a Kid, we were told that Anyone can be President.
Unlike Monarchies in which Governing Bodies were determined by BloodLine, America had Democracy and that meant that Anyone could be President.
But there wasn’t one Black Kid in my ClassRoom who didn’t know that there hadn’t been anyone like them in that Office.
And there wasn’t one Girl who wasn’t thinking that there had never been anyone like her in that Office.
And there wasn’t one Gay Kid like me who didn’t know that while there probably was a Lot of Gay Sex going on in Washington, it wasn’t allowed to be talked about out loud.
But on the morning of November 9^th, I shall be Celebrating that Glass Ceiling Broken for Good!
Yet, I must be careful not to get so intoxicated with Joy that I forget about you.
You will be in Pain, as you are now, but without the Hope of a Leader who will Destroy the World on your Behalf.
You will still feel somehow slighted, as if the continued existence of our Government and these United States somehow does you an injustice, because you without a Plan, were to be the Great Crusader who Destroyed it
and that would have made you feel Big,
For a Moment…
You will be Miserable.
And if I do not figure out a way to take you in,
To be Kind to You,
To Forgive You and Accept you back into the Fold,
Then I am just as Guilty as you of contributing to the Destruction of this Beautiful Country.

I must find the Courage to Choose Forgiveness.
And I harbor no Illusions that this will be Easy for me.
It horrifies me that I shall sit in conversations with you.
It disturbs me that I shall have to justify my Country to you.
I would prefer to stay within my cocoon of Bleeding Heart Liberals who advocate the Love and Acceptance of EveryBody and pretend you don’t exist.
But that isn’t Love and Acceptance of EveryBody, is it?
And that makes me guilty of the exact thing I reject about you.

So that is not an option.
I do not like DONALD tRUMP, and the embarrassment to the world that there are enough Citizens within our Fluid and Loving and Welcoming Borders who think that he is worthy of his candidacy.
It is an insult to all of US.
But we who Believe in Higher Ideals can withstand an insult.
We can even withstand the repeated insults to Dignity and Humanity that his tantrum throwing nonsense has put forth to the World.
The Challenge is to fight for those Higher Ideals anyway!
And if those Ideals include a World in which Healing and Unity may be Possible,
Then Unfriending you is not the answer.
We must see past your rage to your Hurt.
We must see past your railing and violence to your Wounded Child.
We must get past our differences to find the dissatisfaction we all share,
And begin to Communicate.
I must Listen to you, which will be painful to me as you represent all of the ignorance and acrimony that I wish did not exist to the degree that it apparently does —
in the World,
in these United States,
even in my Family!
I must open my ears and my Heart to process your pain in addition to my own,
and take in the seemingly insurmountable Pain that you have caused.
This is Forgiveness.
This is where it must begin.
I shall ask GOD for the strength to listen to you without Judgement and see past your Hatred of me, and everyone else, to find the aching Human Being within,
Just like I ask GOD to do with me all the Time,
And I shall do everything I can to Love you back to Health,
Although I too am a Person with Disability when it comes to Love — I think we all are.
I think this is part of the Master Plan so that we may Learn to Lean on one another,
For that is what Love is!
Maybe we can work together so that everyone will benefit,
and just like some Sci-Fi Movie when the Aberration is defeated at the end,
we shall do our Best to see that, a DONALD tRUMP does not rise in our midst again.
But the only way to do that
Is to recognize that we are all in this Together
And we must Love One another
Rise from this place of Discontent, Entitlement on Both Sides, and Warring Hatred
into a better Place of Understanding, Forgiveness, and Peace.
I shall do what I can to continue to Live in Gratitude Each Day
And to teach you Gratitude, as well.
That is where it begins.

Election Day is Always the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
The earliest it can fall is November 2^nd, and the Latest is November 8^th.
So, this year’s Presidential Campaign is as long as one can possibly be.
Ironic, eh?
We Must use the Gift of this extra time to build Bridges to Peace!
Perhaps, too, it is no accident that Election Day also falls in the month of the GivingThanks Day Holiday.
This Country was brought into being in Gratitude.
Perhaps Gratitude is the Necessary Healing around which we can all come together and Begin.
You who wear those hats and t-shirts manufactured in China which say “Make America Great Again!”
Would you join me in Making America GRATEFUL Again?

Within each of us,
There is a place of Gratitude —
I shall meet you there.

Perhaps we don’t even need to wait until November 9^th.
Let’s Begin our Healing Now!
Today!

JOY REID of MSNBC has described the existence of tRUMP’s Candidacy as making us aware that in fact there are Two Countries in these United States of America — Two Countries that wouldn’t even be able to come to a Peace Treaty with one another!

I would say to that that We Must!
We Must Remain United.
And within that,
Now that we are painfully, keenly aware that each other exists,
We Must find a way to Peace.
Peace is the Way.
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