In the autumn of 2022, Montanans—who, I swear, didn’t quite realize what they were doing—managed to cherry pick the worst of our citizens for almost every political position available. There are, of course, some notable and noble exceptions. But across the board, we (used very euphemistically) checked our ballot boxes for money grubbing, out-of-state or out-of-touch land and tech developers; bullies; right-wing religious fanatics; intertwined, interpaternalistic family members; creationists; crude followers of whatever out-of-state guidance they received from Christian nationalists.
Yes, we weren’t an exception to the patterns of red-state behavior. But we aren’t one. We’ve been better. We know better. For more than 75 years, we chafed under a copper collar. And its tentacles that held newspapers and politics in a death grip. We’d only begun freeing ourselves from that when the copper industry kicked us to the curb and walked out. And for a while, Montana found its practical, even inspired soul. We elected giants to many positions (think Mike Mansfield and Pat Williams and Lee Metcalf). And for others, we elected ordinary, pragmatic folks more interested in helping the state than kow-towing to party or narrow, bigoted interests.
So, our history alone should tell us not to put our fate in the hands of out-of-state power hungry politicians.
But we just did.
And what makes that capitulation to the Freedom Caucus (which, of course, advocated for everything EXCEPT personal or municipal freedom) even more bizarre—curious—outrageous is the very place we call home.
You and I have the privilege to live in Big Sky Country. The Land of Shining Mountains. The Treasure State. Never mind our national or state parks, you and I get groceries and fill up our gas tanks every day against a backdrop of lavish beauty. At the drop of a free afternoon, we can find ourselves a sweet stream, a picnic spot, a road on which we’ll meet no one for an hour. Our evening sunlight rivals that of Italy—and we live in its gold. We are the story and the country that’s inspired brilliant writers and most recently TV producers.
So, you’d think, or at least I think, that this very place—this Last Best Place—would summon our better angels. Would inspire us to think kindly and broadly and freely when it comes to how we care for each other and this land.
I don’t understand how—in the face of this landscape and our history—we allowed ourselves to be hornswaggled by pinch-faced, pinch-hearted people. By people whose focus is so bitter, so self-centered, so petty that they ignore the true treasures of this place. Along with the ordinary people whose ancestors have lived here since time immemorial and newer families who came to try their luck—not really for a quick buck (though the miners hoped) but for just a safe steady life.
I don’t understand how people who claim to be extra Christian, to be much holier than the rest of us, can justify their narrow mindedness. Their cruelty. Their self-righteousness. Against a backdrop of grand, ethereal mysteries and beauty that others pay lavishly to visit.
Some summer Sunday nights in my prairie home town of McPherson, Kansas, our congregation met in Lakeside Park instead of the church. Our vespers honored the natural world. In that unremarkable Midwestern picnic spot replete with lonely ducks, quiet water breeding mosquitoes, a breeze in the cottonwoods, we began by singing:
God, who touchest earth with beauty,
Make me lovely too;
With Thy Spirit re-create me,
Make my heart anew. . . .
Like the arching of the heavens,
Lift my thoughts above;
Turn my dreams to noble action,
Ministries of love. *
And we ended with:
Day is dying in the west;
Heav’n is touching earth with rest;
Wait and worship while the night
Sets her evening lamps alight
Through all the sky.*
Sung reverently, acapella, four- part harmony.
I can no more imagine our current slate of Freedom Caucus folks being able to say or sing those words. Or feel the awe and gratitude laced through them. Or bring to their work the gentleness and “noble action” that this state’s beauty prompts.
For me, those heartfelt sentiments—to stand in awe and to honor Montana and the people who’ve come to make a life here—become the litmus test for where my votes will land. I am not impressed by the pretenders who pray for show on street corners, who wield smugness rather than understanding, who boast mansions and personal jets but spend no time caring for the least among us, who ridicule and exclude and harm anyone whose beliefs and background they do not share.
Vicious charlatans. Villains posing as principled. Whose behavior desecrates this most remarkable place. ©
*Hymns: God Who Touchest Earth with Beauty, Composer C. Harold Lowden, Author Mary S. Edgar; Day is Dying in the West, Composer William Fiske Sherwin, Author Mary A. Lathbury.
