There is lots of grief among people I know regarding the election results. None of us know what the election of Donald Trump will mean. Bob read something that said, “When a clown enters a palace, he does not become king. When a clown enters a palace, the palace becomes a circus.”

Weird indeed. Fear of what may happen is tinging many parts of the US population.

Those who have been on the margins of society are fearful that the President Elect will unleash another wave of violence towards them in cities across the nation. Even people with valid American citizenship who do not look like the WASP population are fearful. What has this country come to?

I have waited my entire lifetime for the government to take notice of those who are on the margins, the mentally ill, the unhoused, those who look unlike me and all of us in need of help, compassion, mercy. That dream seems to get further and further away as I age. Instead those people seem to be neglected more each year.

On a recent visit to the San Francisco Bay area, Bob said that the homeless population seems to increase every time he visits. The climate there is temperate and the unhoused find it easier to live on the streets there than on the streets of Cincinnati. There is no national plan that I know of being made to approach this problem.

I was crushed in 1984 when the hospital for the mentally ill, Longview State hospital, closed in Cincinnati. Where were these folks to get help? I did not understand the problems with institutionalized asylums. I just could not comprehend turning people out in the streets. People that needed our care and compassion.

Now people are beaten in the street if they look Asian. Those of Mexican or South American descent are being told they will be rounded up and deported unless they can prove American citizenship. I wonder who is going to do suburban lawn care, pick the crops, slaughter the chickens and replace roofing on homes? Much less, clean motel rooms and manicure golf courses?

People in twenty some states are being sent texts telling them they should prepare to be picked up from their homes and be sent to pick cotton. What is this evil force being unleashed among Americans? As if farms even picked cotton by hand anymore! That pretty much ended in the 1970s!

Is this all politically driven or has America always been this mean? Has an undercurrent of hatred tinged every generation? Have I been a fool wearing rose tinted glasses my entire life?

Such violent hatred. Floods of intentionally unkind vitriolic language! How have we come to this blatant disregard for the ones we see as other? Do we not believe we are all made in God’s image and given certain rights? Each of us is human!!

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Preamble to the Declaration of Independence

I do not have answers as to how we should solve all these problems but I do believe it begins with respecting other persons as part of us, the human race. I recently bought a license plate frame for my car that reads:

We are Humankind. Be both: human and kind.

Oh that we would all take this to heart! We are people. We are human. We each need kindness.

Even the President Elect. God help us, I pray.

Bless this house O Lord we pray; Make it safe by night and day;
Bless these walls so firm and stout, Keeping want and trouble out:
Bless the roof and chimneys tall, Let thy peace lie over all;
Bless this door, that it may prove ever open to joy and love.

Bless these windows shining bright, Letting in God's heav'nly light;
Bless the hearth a'blazing there, with smoke ascending like a prayer;
Bless the folk who dwell within, keep them pure and free from sin;
Bless us all that we may be 
Fit O Lord to dwell with thee;
Bless us all that one day we 
May dwell O Lord with thee.