Putting the ‘Us’ Back In The U.S.
Today I leave for Italy, the country of my ancestors and one I love as much as the U.S. where I was born. In recent years, I have spent increasingly long periods in Italy largely because of the heartache I’ve felt over the divisiveness and sheer ugliness that has plagued our country for more than a decade now. I depart this time, though with a lighter mood and a feeling of hope that we might truly find our way out of our decades-long collective dark political night of the soul.
I write not as a member of any particular political party, but as a person of faith. Still, it was refreshing to hear speakers at the Democratic National Convention stress the good that takes place on a daily basis in our country and reaffirm the basic decency of our people. Neighbors still care for neighbors. Strangers still stop to help strangers.
Something vice presidential nominee Tim Walz said in his acceptance speech has stayed with me. He talked about the importance of belonging:
“Growing up in a small town like that, you learn how to take care of each other. And that family down the road, they may not think like you do, they may not pray like you do, they may not love like you do, but they’re your neighbors and you look out for them and they look out for you. Everybody belongs. And everybody has a responsibility to contribute.”
Everybody belongs. Waltz’s words coincide with the Benedictine spiritual values of community, consensus, hospitality and humility that are so central to my own personal spirituality. The Rule of St. Benedict urges us to look upon all people as Christ, to do what is best for others, not what is best for yourself.
In short, to care about and cultivate the common good.
Benedictine principles echoed as well in one of Kamala Harris’ messages: when one of us hurts, we all hurt, and when one of us succeeds, we all succeed.
One of the things I love about living part-time in Italy is the sense of community I find there. Friendship, not having money, is a core value. Friendship is on vivid display in the small town of Guardiagrele in the Abruzzo region where I stay on most of my visits. There, men who have known each other since elementary school still gather mornings in the main piazza for conversation. It is a way of keeping track of one’s friends, of who might need a ride to the doctor, or who might need some help moving some furniture or caring for an elderly parent.
Another story I like to tell comes from the time I stayed with my husband in the city of Cassino, where St. Benedict wrote his Rule at the Abbey of Monte Cassino. I mentioned to our upstairs neighbor that the refrigerator in our apartment wasn’t working well. I didn’t mind because the weather was cool enough for me to store some perishables outside on the window ledge — a practice I learned when I was an exchange student in France and none of our student rooms were equipped with mini-fridges like so many dorm rooms in the U.S.
The next morning, I heard a commotion on the stairs coming up to my apartment. My neighbor had located a used refrigerator and enlisted a couple of his buddies to carry it up the two flights of stairs to our rooms. They even moved the old refrigerator into a spare bedroom we had.
When I told an Italian friend how impressed I was with my neighbor’s kindness, she simply shrugged and said it was the Italian way. “People want to be helpful.”
This week I felt that same spirit of community, that same yearning for belonging bubbling up after such a long, cold season of political division.
It gave me hope that we don’t have to endure a presidential campaign that wallows in name-calling, demonizing, or aggrandizing oneself to make someone else seem small. We can demand better of our candidates. Disagree with your opponent’s positions and policies, yes. But don’t call them names, insult their family, denigrate their looks, or lie to bolster your ego. Please!
It was heartening to hear so many speakers at the Democratic Convention talk about what remains right with America — which is a heck of a lot. In the turbulent 1960s, Thomas Merton wrote of the importance of recognizing Christ in strangers, and especially in those who are not like us. “If you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the church door,” Merton said, “You will not find him in the chalice” of the Eucharist.
One of the most stirring and eloquent speeches at the convention came not from a political figure but poet-musician Stevie Wonder. It was as though he was espousing the Benedictine values of community and hospitality without even knowing it:
“We must choose courage over complacency … joy over anger, kindness over recrimination and peace over war, every time. We must choose to be above the ugly words, the hateful anger and the division those angry words create. We must keep on keeping on until we are truly a united people of these United States, and then we will reach our higher ground.”
A few weeks ago, CNN showed a clip of remarks that then-presidential candidate Sen. Robert Kennedy made in 1968 to a crowd of mostly black Americans on the night of Martin Luther King’s assassination. His words are as resonant today as on that evening:
“What we need in the United States is not division. What we need in the United States is not hatred. What we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.”
This week can we reach for that higher ground that Stevie Wonder sang of with words and acts of love, wisdom, decency and kindness? Can we be like my neighbors in Italy, who simply wanted to be helpful. Can we finally put the “us” back in U.S.?
