Morning-After Kissing

First of all, thank you to all who offered themselves up as candidates to the rigorous eternity of tire-kicking that is the campaign season. You’ve done something quite heroic. Go back to whatever you did before this began with a merit badge of civic blessing.

Secondly, congratulations to those who prevailed. Take this brief moment to enjoy a deep breath. That’s about all the respite you will get. It’s time to set yourself to the task — and it won’t be easy. The process, itself, sees to that.

There is a country song that ruefully acknowledges, “It’s hard to kiss the lips at night that chew your ass out all day long” (The Notorious Cherry Bombs).

It’s a clever turn of phrase which, when it is on track, is country music’s stock and trade.  Earthy, I'll admit, but clever.  It makes me smile.  But it’s a wry smile.  Most of us know how difficult it is to walk back out of hurtful words we’ve spoken into a more promising and productive space.

I think of that challenge on a day like today — the day after a bitter political season ground to a close; the day after the clock counting down the hours of a very long “day” of ass-chewing finally ran down.  It won’t be easy in the coming days and months for these elected officials to practice statecraft with these lips that have spent this season in character assassination and moral diminishment.   We are increasingly brutal in our politicking— increasingly personal, and dishonest in our representations.  Suddenly, then, with the votes counted and the machines stored away until next time, fierce opponents are supposed to cohere into a productive and representative governing body.  It’s going to take more than puckering, but if we are going to be a functioning country that’s the work ahead.  

And it’s not just the politicians, of course, who have this difficult relational work to do.  Given our collective comportment over the past year and more, there is a good chance there will be a few lips gathered around our holiday tables in the month we aren’t looking forward to kissing.    The carving knives aren’t the only sharp objects laying around, and we will have some relational healing and accommodating to do.  But if we are to be a functioning family and community that’s the work ahead.  

So how will we manage it?  I remember reading about the awkward difficulty American clergy experienced in the wake of World Wars preaching healing and reconciliation after so lustily preaching against the enemy throughout the war.  It’s easier — and usually more fun — to froth up our righteous indignation and demonization than to work up a sweat in service to healing and common cause.  Which ought to give us pause.  Like it or not, we are going to have to kiss these lips.

I’m not suggesting we merely throw another log on the campfire, hold hands and sing “Kum Ba Ya” — although I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t humming it right now.  Life together in this public space is more complicated than that, and infinitely more difficult.  I’m simply saying we had better find other ways to debate the very serious matters confronting us — global warming and the degradation of the environment, racism, anti-semitism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and the genuine challenge of existing as but one member of a diverse and messy global community, and our various and seemingly multiplying ways of abusing each other — than with our teeth.  

And listen afresh to what our various religions teach us about the value of human life, the care of our neighbor, and the imperative to love.

Because there isn’t finally anywhere for us to go but into each other’s arms.  

And may God help us to finally comprehend this fundamentally basic truth:

That it is hard to kiss the lips at night that chew your ass out all day long.