Loudmouths

We don’t have cable at our house yet, so on Sunday mornings I’m stuck watching whatever channels come in clearly with some flimsy rabbit ears. I generally enjoy George Stephanopoulos and Bob Schieffer. As luck would have it, the two channels they are on don’t come in on the television. Karma, I guess. I shouldn’t have called Stacy Traylor fat in eighth grade.

(In return, though, she shouldn’t have made up a Christmas carol, to the tune of the 12 Days of Christmas, with a line about my virginity status in it! On the first day, no less, so that it had to be repeated TWELVE times! Ugh, I hope she’s 350 pounds right now.)

Political shows on Sunday – especially Meet the Press and Fox News Sunday – always raise my blood pressure. They are a celebration in loudmouths, and a reminder of the partisan culture Washington likes to keep us contained in. Today, Chris Wallace practically introduced Ned Lamont as if he was running on the Al-Qaeda ticket. Ken Mehlmann (chair of the Republican National Committee, and the spokesperson for diarrhea of the mouth) practically blamed Democrats for the existence of liquid explosives.

Loudmouths.

They’ve probably dominated politics since the beginning of politics. One more reason, perhaps, why only 50 percent of the country votes.

Rilke, a well-known German poet, wrote a poem about a God-like person – a woman – that one day will arrive and cast the loudmouths in their place. For anyone looking for an end to partisan, Washington politics, this poem should resonate:

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
Of her life, and weaves them gratefully
Into a single cloth –
It’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
And clears it for a different celebration.

Where the one guest is you.
In the softness of evening
It’s you she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,
The unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure you encompass more
And she stretches beyond what limits her,
To hold you.

A former religion professor of mine used this poem as a way to describe what the energy of God looks like. I see it as a call to hope – a reminder that some day, we might mend our personal baggage (our “ill-matched threads”), and weave them into a tapestry that reflects a life beyond black and white understanding. It’s a call to community, and an end to the anxiety and individualism that so dominates this world.

If and when this call happens, it doesn’t matter how depressing television on Sunday morning is; the loudmouths, after all, get driven from our worlds.