The joke goes, “How do you know if someone has run a marathon? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.” Now that I’ve prepared you all, I have run marathons and the hardest was the first, even though it was the one for which I was best prepared physically. The mental drain of the unknown can really take its toll.
It feels like we are at the starting line, waiting for the official start of a marathon on January 20, 2025. It’s going to be a long four years. There will be pain and heartache and fear and many other negative emotions over the next four plus years. But we’ve run this marathon before. We know the incompetence and vitriol and callousness that is coming. I believe we are better prepared mentally to deal with this marathon as we lived through the mental drain of the unknown that was 2016-2020.
To quote Mr. Rogers, let’s look for the helpers. There are people tasked with passing out water and energy gels along a marathon route. But there are also community members who set up in their yards or on college campuses along the route with signs and words of encouragement, or donuts, or sometimes even beer or a Bloody Mary. Let’s be sure we see those helpers and utilize them when needed in this marathon. And let our Congregation be helpers for others in the ways we can, such as being a safe space for Spectrum Café and the free concert in our building on December 21st. (I really hope “Here Comes the Sun” is one of the songs as it is the Winter Solstice!) We survived this marathon before and we will survive it again by continuing to live love in the world.
Stacy Yoder