I have been hoping to offer some reflections on the recent election but have not been able to find the time. I returned home from Colorado on Tuesday evening, after giving a talk on Oscar Wilde at Colorado State University, and I spent all day yesterday catching up with the backlog of work that had accumulated in my absence. Tomorrow morning I leave for a three day retreat in Texas at which I will offer three reflections on C. S. Lewis’ Great Divorce. As for today, I could spend it writing about the Obamanation in which we find ourselves or I could spend it with my four-year-old daughter at the Children’s Museum. I am choosing to do the latter, which I feel serves as a timely metaphor for what all Christians should be doing in the wake of the election. We live in the midst of a hedonistic culture literally hell-bent on self-destruction. So be it. Let’s not forget that Christians have never belonged in the world, which has always been a land of exile and a vale of tears, and more often than not a place of persecution. And let’s not forget that Christ did not come to conquer Caesar; he came to conquer Death. My daughter is at my shoulder wondering when I’m going to go on our adventure. She’s more important than Caesar.  
 
As for the lessons to be gleaned from the election, let’s remind ourselves that Caesar crucified Christ and that Caesar is dead while Christ lives. And let’s remind ourselves that the World has always been at war with the Church. History is full of Martyrs. There is no way to Christ except the way of the Cross. Hope does not rest with poiliticians but with the Mystical Body of Christ.
 
As the World sinks into the mire of its own sef-constructed despair, let’s continue to rise with the resurrected Hope of Jesus Christ.
 
Any further ruminations on the Obamanation wil have to wait until I have nothing more important to do. In the interim, here’s a powerful reflection on the lessons to be learned from history in the wake of the pitiful eleciton: