Walter Brueggemann, in a published prayer titled “Stunned by the morning,” writes: “The night of defeat is long and still and unbearable. / We know the nights / and our sisters and brothers / who are cold, / and hungry, / and brutalized know them better than do we.”
Even now, some 70-plus million American voters are living in their own night of defeat, some puzzled, most disappointed, and not a few angry. In this night of defeat may our eyes and hearts be turned in compassion toward our cold, hungry, and brutalized sisters and brothers, that we may find a way to turn voters’ disappointment and anger into a force that lightens the burden of defeat for the most vulnerable. May this season of goodwill find expression in a gift of money or the volunteering of time to those persons and institutions who work with the homeless, those who offer shelter to the brutalized, and those who feed the hungry. May this night of defeat become someone else’s dawn awakening.
RICHARD SLATER
Hopkinton