Tell me how to vote!
Tell me how to vote!
Nope. But I will accompany you as you discern.
Dear Soulful Revolutionary,
I am at an age where I no longer have people on whom to model my life. I first noticed this about a decade ago, in my mid-20s. For the first time in my life, there was no individual person whom I could look at and say, “They have the life I want to have when I grow up.” Perhaps you can point to a moment in your life like this too.
Of course, there continue to be people whose lives inspire and shape me. I may be profoundly impacted by one person’s writing, or another person’s way of being a friend, or another person’s parenting, or another’s entrepreneurial ministry, or another’s activism. I glean lessons and inspiration from so many people. But there is no single person whose life serves as a template for my own.
This is a healthy evolution from childhood, in which we naturally imprint on our parents or closest caregivers. Ideally, the people who raise us have a way of being in the world that serves us well throughout our own lives. Some of us have more work to do than others to piece apart what was helpful and what hurt. Whatever the case may be, as one of my friends likes to say, if our children go to therapy for different issues than we brought from our families of origin, we will have done well as parents.
The point is, if we want to be mature adults walking through the world with wisdom, intentional individuation is as necessary as it is painful. We don’t do this alone — we need communities of support that reflect back to us our best qualities while asking questions of us that help us continue to heal and integrate the loose ends. And still, we need to refrain from checking our discernment at the door. Because it can be really tempting to allow a community to become a substitute for that childhood role model, making our decisions for us.
Right now, there is a widespread evolution in political consciousness taking place. A lot of people are feeling unmoored by this shift, as formerly trusted political “parents” (party leaders) or “homes” (political parties), are increasingly seen as unreliable in the face of rising fascism and ongoing genocides. There is a growing recognition that the collective concession of our discernment to the political ruling class is part of what has gotten us this war-mongering, climate-catastrophe-complicit, police-state-fostering two party duopoly. This is a deeply unsettling feeling to live with.
Consequently, a lot of us are reaching out to people we trust for answers this US election season. We want the comfort of a clearcut solution — to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that we have done the right thing when it comes to our vote. Perhaps even more so, we want to know there is authority behind the answer we receive.
This essay, in three parts, constitutes my response to the question: “Tell me how to vote.”
Short answer: No.
But the longer answer is: I will accompany you as you discern what to do. I will share questions and stories that are shaping my own discernment. And I will support you as you deepen your attention to your own inner authority.
I am increasingly clear that my work as a human is that of spiritual accompaniment— helping folks discern the voice of the Holy in their own lives. This work resonates with the advice offered by poet Rainer Maria Rilke in his Letters to a Young Poet, which has long accompanied me on my journey:
Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart.
Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
This is my love letter to the left — to those who are already both anti-fascism and anti-genocide AND trying to make sense of how to authentically embody these values, including within the constraining space of electoral politics.
My reason for not telling you what to do in an election season is not the seemingly obvious one (that the IRS bars clergy from promoting candidates for their pulpits – something made much more messy as the definition of pulpit is increasingly complicated by social media and other platforms).
No, the reason I will not tell you to whom you should give your support is because I have learned, the hard way, that being told what to do leaves a person insecure, unstable, and unable to make a hard decision the next time one comes around.
What I will offer is spiritual accompaniment through probing questions. This is about helping you learn to do the difficult work of discerning for yourself what is ethical, moral, strategic and spiritually sound. And if you are interested in learning about my own ongoing discernment process, I have written about that here (though I’ll tell you now that you’re not going to find a clearcut answer on how I will be voting there either!)
Here is the first of three questions to consider as you wrestle with how (and perhaps whether) to vote:
Who are you carrying with you to the ballot box?
What do we owe one another?
How do we honor the life and struggle of those who came before us?
How do we make the way easier for those who will come after us?
How do we honor those who are not able to vote, perhaps because they are undocumented, or because they have been disenfranchised by the penal system, or because they have been unknowingly erased from the rolls?
How do we stand with those whose suffering and deaths are funded by our tax dollars?
How can we be in solidarity with those living in places where any semblance of democracy has been entirely stripped away?
These are a few questions of collective care that we might carry with us as we discern how to vote in November. To make a choice in this spiritually and strategically fraught environment is an act of deep individual discernment, but that doesn’t mean it must be individualistic.
adrienne maree brown has an ongoing series of conversations about “election time” on her Instagram page and podcast, How to Survive the End of the World. In this episode, community and electoral organizer Sendolo Diaminah notes how Black folks have always known the vote to be “about strategy and impact and that is part of a collective process.” This is the antithesis to the way in which white America promotes a highly individualistic and consumeristic approach to voting, even considering it simply “a form of shopping.”
If our circles of concern are limited to only us and our immediate family and friends, or even us and our local community, it is worth pausing to ask why these are the only people factoring into our discernment. And, to consider who benefits when we fail to widen the circle.
At the same time, people with wide circles of concern may still choose to vote differently. This is wildly apparent within the left: some contend that a vote for the Democratic ticket is an act of harm reduction for vulnerable communities (see Melissa Florer-Bixler’s piece on “Voting for more tools in my toolbox”).
Others assert that the only way of standing with Palestinians and humanity against genocide is by leveraging an uncommitted stance to persuade the party to change its position. (People in this group may ultimately opt to vote Democrat, third-party, or not at all.)
Still others insist that a third-party vote is the most honoring of those who have suffered under the current administration, and a means of opening up future possibilities for a non-duopoly system. Some are making this decision because they live in a blue state where a third-party vote is a safe way to register moral outrage. Others are persuaded this is the only ethical way they can vote, but are organizing for the Harris/Walz ticket. And still others plan to register their protest against the current administration by not voting at all.
It is possible for people in all of these groups to have wide circles of past, present and future community in mind as they discern the way forward. In wrestling with and making a decision on how to vote within the context of community, it is vital that we not reduce another’s choice as thoughtless or uncaring.
As Black writer and pastor Danté Stewart recently wrote:
I feel a kind of sadness at the way people are treating black people who are supporting VP Harris, who have stood in solidarity with Palestinians, only to be told we are the worst people in the world when we are on the frontlines, everyday, in the fight against the worst of America.
Can we hold the humanity of those from whom we come and those whom for whom we care in the highest regard, while continuing to listen to those bringing the concerns of their communities to the ballot box too?
And, as brown notes in another brilliant and helpful episode featuring Dr. Brittany Cooper, to care for people is to seek to be in formation with one another. A politics that prioritizes people will put relationships at the center, and that means noticing how groups of people are moving and getting organized with them so that we can move with greater power.
Standing off to the side with chest puffed up in self-righteous moral superiority is not how we make change happen.
So again, who are you bringing with you to the ballot box? What lineages of political organizing inspire you, and who is doing that work today? What issues call to you and the people you love, and how can you widen the circle to include others affected by these too? No matter how you choose to vote, can you get involved with an organizing community that is working between cycles to make change happen?
Next week we will look at the role worship plays in political discernment, interrogating the human tendency to make idols of people and systems. In the meantime, please let me know what you thought of this piece in the comments. Your questions and reflections will help me shape the next couple essays.
Also, I’m thinking of holding a space for political discernment on Zoom for paid subscribers. If that’s of interest to you, let me know in the chat or reply to this email!