Bear With One Another

My friend reminded me, this day after the election, of a passage of a book we read together 40-odd years ago, The Age of Ideas, by George Havens.  It was a history of the French enlightenment before the French Revolution of 1789.  Counseling against the polarization and hatred that welled up to cause that cataclysm, Voltaire wrote, in 1763, a Treatise on Tolerance.  "If you wish to be like Jesus Christ, be martyrs, not executioners." He concluded the Treatise with a Prayer to God.  My friend quoted it in full:

"Thou has not given us a heart to hate or hands to slay each other.  Grant that we may aid one another to bear the burden of a painful and transitory life, that the slight differences between the garments which cover our feeble bodies, between our inadequate languages, our ridiculous customs, our imperfect laws, our senseless opinions, between our stations, so different in our own eyes, so equal before Thee, that all these little differences which distinguish the atoms called men shall not be signals for hate and persecution, that those who light candles to worship Thee at midday may bear with those who are content with the light of Thy sun, that those who cover their robes with white linen to testify their love for Thee shall not scorn those who say the same thing from beneath a cloak of black wool, that it make no difference whether we adore Thee in a jargon formed from an ancient language, or in one which is more recent, that those whose garb is dyed red or violet, who dominate a tiny bit of the little heap of mud of this world and who possess a few round pieces of a certain metal, enjoy without pride what they call grandeur and riches, and that others look upon without envy, for Thou knowest that in these vanities there is cause neither for envy nor pride.

"May all men remember that they are brothers!  May they look with horror on tyranny exercised over souls just as they execrate the brigandage which steals by force the fruits of work and peaceful industry.  If the scourge of war is inevitable, let us not hate one another, not tear one another to pieces in the midst of peace, and let us use the moment of our existence to bless, in our thousand different languages from Siam to California, Thy goodness which has granted us this moment."

May we enter the post-election period with this prayer in mind!