'The general welfare'

Photo by Yoav Hornung on Unsplash

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
~ The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution

By Melissa Walsh
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My “Happy New Year” wish this year has never been more sincere.

As an individual and matriarch and four sons, I’ve experienced difficult years, emotionally and financially. When arriving at the close of those years, I would reach deep and find hope for a better year ahead — for myself and my sons. I felt this sense of combined sadness, relief, and hope acutely for my own family, leaving little room for a healthy empathy for the struggles of friends, acquaintances, and strangers.

In 2020, I grew a much deeper longing for healing for my community, nation, and world. I evolved healthier love. Though my own losses and struggles over the years had cultivated in me an appreciation for relationships, 2020 grew in me a new gratitude for community kinship and desire to always be kind, no matter how tired or inconvenienced I become going through life’s mundane activities. I had thought that my 53 years had already given me enough love for others, but this past year showed me how much more I needed to learn about connecting with community, treating strangers as precious, and loving my family and friends better.

The past year presented humans in the light of vulnerable being. It was important for me to see that vulnerability and study my reaction to it. When staying home became an act to protect others against the physical suffering brought on by this COVID-19 plague and protecting those who love them against grief, I was able to see deep into my heart. I saw a will to do good, but I also saw fear, selfishness, hypocrisy. I saw my own vulnerability and a buried resistance to sacrifice for strangers that I needed to dig up and destroy in order to truth in doing what’s right for promoting the general welfare, not doing what is most consistent with my individual pursuit of happiness and comfort.

The blessings of liberty will not survive in a society plagued by arrogant, selfish, and willfully ignorant citizens who choose to feel threatened by wearing a mask to contain a pandemic. Blessings of liberty thrive only when we view our neighbors and strangers as the most sacred objects of Liberty, exceedingly more dear than our homes, our guns, our church buildings, our comfort.

In his essay "The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis put it this way: "It is in light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit. ... Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.”

Amen.

© 2021 Melissa Walsh

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