Two or three times a year, a township resident named Merla will come into my office just to talk and ‘catch up’. Merla is 91 years old with the mind of a thirty-year-old – alert and completely rational.
Merla is a member of a church that my husband and I used to attend. She has been a member of that church for more than sixty years. I served as choir director in the church for fifteen years, and as a Sunday school teacher in the adult Sunday school class for eight years. She was both in my choir and in my Sunday school class all of that time.
I love Merla dearly. She is about as close to what I would consider ‘saintly’ as any person I know. I would trust anything she says or does to be what she considers to be ‘right’. She never turns from truth because of expediency, and she has a deeply caring heart. She is much more concerned with, and in touch with, spiritual things than worldly concerns, sometimes I believe to her detriment. Not that there is anything wrong with spirituality, but, for our own benefit, we sometimes need to pay close attention to the worldly things going on around us. Even though we are very different in some ways, and even though we only see each other a few times a year when she decides to visit me at my office, I feel a closeness with, and a respect for, Merla that I feel with few other people, simply because she is such a rare individual.
Today she mentioned the fact that she prays daily for so many people who are having serious difficulties, and she also mentioned that she prays for our country. She doesn’t know what this election will bring, but she believes she will vote for Obama again.
When I asked why, she responded, ‘I don’t know much about Mormonism, but I am told it is a cult so I don’t believe I can vote for the republican. I was very moved by Obama’s Easter address. He appears to be a good Christian, even though some people question that, and his main problem is that he is trying to be too kind to too many people.’
I decided that my office, with limited time, was not the place to begin trying to ‘educate’ Merla, so I simply shook my head and said, ‘I don’t agree with you, Merla, but we don’t want to go into this here and now.’
I plan to invite her to dinner sometime during the next month or two (something I’ve never done, and really should have), and we’ll see whether there is an opening for my husband and me to try to dispense some political truths to her.
What has me so sad since talking with her this morning is the fact that a good percentage of the votes that Barack Obama will receive – maybe even enough to put him over the top – will be from people like Merla -- good and decent people who simply do not know what this man has done, or what he truly stands for. That is the real tragedy of this entire election process. |
