All looking for America

Driving on a cool mid-September afternoon through Ohio’s rural Geauga county, there was no way I could keep count of the campaign signs lining the two-lane roads.

Biden…Biden…Trump…Biden…Trump…Trump--I passed by them at around 50 mph, overwhelmed by their public display of love for and commitment to America, by the trust they evidenced in our democratic system.

Somewhere along my way, my ancient CD of Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits came to this track…

Cathy, I’m lost, I said though I knew she was sleeping

And I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why

Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike

They’ve all come to look for America

All come to look for America

All come to look for America…

And I thought, Yes, that’s what we are doing, all us Americans, this aching, anxious autumn…we are looking for America. We’re lost--or it is--we may or may not think we know why or how it came to this...

Some are trying to find an America that they believe once existed, but that never really did.

Some are trying to find an America that never existed for them, but that they still wish might.

Some are seeking an America that seems lost and to be lost…an America some have never found.

Some are seeking an America as described by scholars and scientists, some an America envisioned in imagination.

(Create your own dichotomies of such differences if you wish; I'll stop here.)

We’ve all come looking for America this fall. Placing our bets on leaders who might be able to help us find the America we fear we have lost, or are losing.

Do those campaign signs threaten to pit neighbor against neighbor, our different visions often being at great odds with each other, our our personal separation and isolation being encouraged by political rhetoric and simple slogans?

Or do they represent the strength of a still-vital democracy that is able to trust that voting, not violence, is the way we solve our political differences, is the way we Americans together forge workable understandings of who America is and hopes yet to be?

Some of those neighbors perhaps are able to engage in productive give-and-take about their often competing notions of the America they are seeking. Hurray for them!

Others of those neighbors perhaps just smile across the fence, maybe talk about the Browns, or an ailing child, or the best way to grill a steak. Just daily human stuff, knowing all along they will check different boxes on their ballots, and yet remain good neighbors, even friends. Hurray for them!

Hurray for the variety of neighbors and neighborhoods that are America!

Perhaps good and respectful neighbors are the life-blood of the America we are all looking for…those of us who hurtle down urban turnpikes and those of us who wind our way along country roads…in some impossible sense, all 328 million of us.

I dare to believe the vast majority of Americans on this trip want to look for America together. Can we resist allowing this moment's partisan political passions to take that away from us?