Election Day. A day full of potentiality. For some, the possibility to celebrate. For others, grieve.

When I take a look over the shoulder of my life and examine all the major shaping events, not a single one, not a single one, not a single one has been irredeemable. Not a single “election that didn’t go my way” have I not been able to learn from, grow from, be expanded by. And not always immediately, or gracefully, or even very recognizably.

Are we not all living our lives like sailboats navigating the wind?

Are we all not taking the available weather and overlaying that with the direction we want to travel and setting a course? And rarely, rarely, rarely in sailing does one get to take a straight line to their destination. We tack back and forth. We zig and zag our way. Through weather and waves and cross boat traffic.

Will today be any different than assessing the wind and determining the best course to tack our way to where we’re going?

I see our Nation and the majority of humankind in a state of adolescence. And adolescence is a time of differentiating from our parents, finding our limits, and living in a relatively low or shallow relational context with the world around the adolescent.

And I know I made it through. I know I learned things as I tacked across the ocean of my adolescence that have informed who I am as a man.

I had to.

I had to go my own way.

I had to “other” my parents and their political and religious views.

I had to find the people who I thought I wanted to be with and be like and be accepted by.

I had to.

It was all a necessary part of the adolescent journey.

I think, culturally, we are all very much in an adolescent sea.

And I think its perfect.

And just like the ones around me in my life who loved me, they did their best to keep me safe and to keep me knowing I am loved.

As humankind, I think, we are in an adolescence and the actions of the adolescent are painful to experience. And they are DEVESTATING if we do not believe that there is any hope for the one in this phase of their life, if we think this phase will never give way to a more connected, responsible, service oriented role in community.

If we believe adolescence is to be controlled or sterilized or stunted and that there is no benefit to the human or all the life they interact with as a result of moving through the forest of adolescence then yes, we’ll be devastated with each behavior coming from the individual who finds themselves solidly in this phases of development.

I see us culturally solidly in the phase of adolescence.

I don’t know how long this phase will last.

And I do believe that every bit of experience in this phase has the potential to teach, inform, transform the individual and the society based on the consequences of those actions and behaviors.

I think about our relationship with the natural world and see an adolescent mind.

I think about our efforts to ensure personal sovereignty and rites and I see an adolescent mind.

I think about our devouring and hoarding and warring and I see an adolescent mind.

I think about our controlling of bodies and I see an adolescent mind.

So, if we are in an adolescence as a culture and if we believe that our experiences in this phase have the potential to shape our worldview into something more relationally attuned, responsible and oriented towards service THEN what’s our role during this time of adolescence?

Is it to watch passively and abdicate tyranny, greed, war, control?

Is it to wage war against these things?

Is there some queer in between?

In between abdication and vehement opposition?

My teenage bonus daughter is in her adolescence. And her brain is perfect. Perfectly adolescent. There is no way she can know and understand the depth of how her actions impact the world around her. She cannot know right now. One day, she’ll come to her own reckoning. One day, she’ll metamorphose through this time into a deeper, wider, more connected understanding of how we are all in this thing together. But she can’t know. Her brain is perfectly attuned to what it is attuned to.

Its our job, as parents, aunts and uncles, teachers, coaches, mentors, horse back riding instructors to live our lives beautifully!

To live our lives in radiance!

To live our lives in poetic support to the world we know is possible. To the world we know is unshakable. Despite any political regime.

Its our job to show that the human spirit is much larger and wilder and unconquerable and the presiding colors of the current party are passing weather patterns and can’t lay a finger on the indomitability of the soul, of the human spirit, of lives lived in service to love.

The best we can do, and the most fun we can have, and the most enlivening that we can offer to support our young ones moving through adolescence, and the same for our culture, is to live our lives out in radiant beauty energizing the truth of what we love.

Live your life in love.

Live your life in love with your life.

Living your life falling in love with falling in love with your life.

Living your life forever expanding the reaches of your love into more and more dark forests.

Can your love extend out into that other political party?

Can your love extend out into the vehicle with those stickers and those flags?

Can your love extend out into the parts of you that the rival party vaguely and privately reminds you of?

Can your love extend deeper into where you are greedy, where you lie, where you are tyrannical, where you can’t think of anything more creative than control?

Can your love extend all the way around this wild mystery of an unfolding world and wrap everybody up in it?

Blue hats and red hats alike?

Yankees and Red Sox alike?

The result of today’s election is an action and a behavior coming out of a culture in its adolescence.

As folks having moved through our adolescence, our duty is to hold the banks. And we do this by being. Being radiant. Being alive. Being in love. With our lives of interconnected, creative, radiant service.

Doesn’t mean we don’t grieve or rage. We do. It just means that we recognize there is a larger and longer story line at play.

Do we rage and grieve every time the teenager rolls their eyes and storms out?

Do we rage and grieve every time the teenager cannot see anything else in the room than themselves?

This is developmentally appropriate behavior.

We support our teenagers leaving this phase by showing them radiant alternatives.

And that’s never why we do it. That is never why we live our lives in beauty and radiance and love. To show them some example? No!

We can’t help it! We can’t help living our lives in beauty! We are gob smacked by this earth, the people who make it up, and the wild story of all who’ve come before and all who are still coming.

This just getting to participate in the great symphony of life is the fuel for living into our radiance.

There’s no trying to convince anyone or trying to live life as an example.

There is only unselfconscious gratitude and wonder and awe chain reacting inside of us to live into the furthest reaches of our lives with light and love and playful participation with the circumstances of our lives.

These lives shine like stars and become the constellations.

These lives shine like stars and can help the lost in finding home.

These lives shine like stars and become the gods and goddesses of our day.

Just lives enjoying being alive.

Regardless of circumstance.

Enjoying the creative challenge available inside of every circumstance we find ourselves in.

Like water always traveling downhill.

Enjoying the unpredictable route and all the little dance partners along the way.

We dance with our circumstances.

We live lives of radiance and wonder and awe.

We love our young ones as they move through their phases.

We love our culture as it moves through its phases.

We cannot change it.

We can only dance with our circumstances.

Dance with circumstance.

Dancing the best I can,
Peter McLean