"The Better Angels of Our Nature"

This has been a wonderful week.  For the first time since August, I was blessed to have a visit from family, as my sister Stephanie came into town for a conference.  I got to see her presentation, which was wonderful and insightful.  But more importantly, I got a chance to spend some time with her between Thursday when I picked her up at the airport and this morning when I dropped her back off at the airport.  It is always such a blessing to have some time with family when you have been away from home.  I was reminded once again just how blessed and lucky I am to have such a wonderful family.

Howard Chandler Christy, "Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States," 1940

I know that most of you, like me, have probably had enough of this election and are just ready for it to be finished.  Without fail, I get to this point every election season because I have usually made up my mind who I will be voting for by early September, meaning that I am the recipient of two months of absolute torture after my mind has been made up.  But in spite of my yearnings to have all of the polls and ads disappear, I do think that this is an important election, and yes, even the most important election of my life.  (Before you quit reading, please know that this isn't a post endorsing one candidate or another).

Let me explain.  I believe that this is the most important election of my life because it is the current election.  Our lives will not be influenced nearly as much by the elections of 2004 or 1992 or 1968 nearly so much as they will be affected by this current election.  Whatever have been the results of the past, they do not change our opportunities to create for ourselves a better and brighter future, and a freer and more just America.  Further, this Tuesday represents our opportunity to keep the principles of the American republic alive.  If we become apathetic and stop voting, we lose our opportunity to influence and shape this wonderful country.  By that act of voting (for whichever candidates we determine to be most meritorious), we declare our willingness to remain involved and to dedicate our service to our nation and our communities.  In this sense, it is an act akin to raising our right arm to sustain the leaders of the Church.

But even as raising our arm to sustain President Monson is not enough to qualify us as disciples of Jesus Christ, so casting our vote in an election booth and doing nothing more will not satisfy the demands of citizenship.  Accepting whatever results may come from the election, we must then put our hands to the plow and go about the work of improving our cities and building a better America.  Nothing concerns me more than the idea that the country's political divisions have become so great that a party must have complete control of Congress and the White House, or the president must issue executive mandates, in order to get anything done.  Compromise and cooperation were two of the most important principles upon which this nation was founded.  And those same principles must continue to define us today.

No matter the results of Tuesday's election--whether your candidates of choice prevail or lose--we must pledge our hands and hearts to the work of making this nation better.

In the dark days following the secession crisis of 1860-61 and immediately preceding the outbreak of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln pled with the nation in his inaugural address, "I am loath to close.  We are not enemies, but friends.  We must not be enemies.  Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.  The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature" (Abraham Lincoln, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 4:263).

Long ago, my Mom and Dad taught me that it is not enough just to be gracious and happy when things go the way I wanted them to.  No matter the outcome of the election, may we all be "touched...by the better angels of our nature."

Brett