Editor’s note: During this election season, when our political life in the United States seems especially contentious, Friends United Meeting has invited a variety of Friends to share their thoughts on how to navigate as a Quaker through these divided times. Our fourth installment is by Fritz Weiss, of New England Yearly Meeting.
What do these times require of us—specifically this election cycle? What these times ask of us is what is always asked of us. But these times—this election season—somehow feels more challenging. I suggest that what these times require of us is our imagination, that we know our convictions, that we act with humbleness, that we hope without attachment to outcome, and that we love.
As Quakers, we have learned to cultivate a very specific type of imagination as we align our vision with God’s imagination for the world; and as we have learned to hold that sacred frame in conversation (and sometimes in conflict) with the competing imaginations that surround us.
The Christian imagination is fundamentally a weird one: with unusual beliefs about sharing all things in common and loving our enemies and the power of prayer and of being God’s body in the world. In covenanted spaces, we learn to practice our imagination together through seasons of discovery and with arduous awkwardness until the imagination that we practiced finally becomes our own.
Fritz Weiss
Portland Friends Meeting
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