NASHUA, NH – For the second time after a Presidential election, the Nashua Area Interfaith Council held a vigil in front of City Hall in Nashua. The event was first planned four years ago and organized in advance for the day after the election, in anticipation of potential violence in the street because of the election.
There was no violence.
The city was calm on this unseasonably warm and sunny morning.
The Nashua Area Interfaith Council comprises about 20 member groups and Gate City faith organizations and individuals. Their affiliation is about community work that is motivated spiritually and religiously in some way.
Rabbi Jon Spira-Savett, of Temple Beth Abraham in Nashua, led the gathering of local clergy and about a dozen citizens in attendance. He began by saying, “We are here in front of this local center of our democracy that belongs to all of us. We’re here together on our main street on a peaceful day after an election day at an inclusive time.”
In light of the election results and acknowledging the division in America between those who are ecstatic about the results and those who are despondent, the Rabbi offered some perspective to consider.
“We have come from groups who have a history of division from each other. And our groups know the history of violence that can come, the violence and pain that can come from division; they’re things that are very, very important. We have learned through our work, the work of the people who come before us to do this today… to bring ourselves together, to learn through those differences, to come together to learn how to appreciate and love each other, even though there are things that are profoundly different about us all,” Spira-Savett said.
Offering this challenge going forward, “is how to build a peace that is enduring and is substantive and lives through tension the way that the peace among us as religious groups has as well. And we know that’s not a simple task. Today’s task is simply to be here together as peace in the circle in front of our city hall and in our city,” he said.
Reverend Allison Palm the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua was one of the clergy gathered and she read a poem by John Rodell that seemed to fit the moment.
When the world goes mad, become wildly kind to everyone
My love, you can’t control much, but you control how you treat others
In these breaking-news, heart-breaking times when nothing feels certain
Let your raw kindness be a certainty
Allow your compassion to become a North Star
Dance up in the sky for others to follow back home
The Reverend closed with this expression of hope for the moment.
“I hope that is what we will do together as an interfaith community, that we will let our kindness be a North Star, that it will be an example for others, and that it will inspire more kindness and love in our world.”