Being open is being open. I told my class today that writing in any way  but honestly is just another form of hiding and lying.  No one is ever completely open, that would be an almost impossible way to live. I have many secrets, so does Maria. No one knows what we do not choose to share.

But authenticity is important to me, with some very personal exceptions, I don’t really want anyone to know more than my readers know about the important things in my life. Student after student tells me they are protecting this person or that, they are afraid of writing this or that,  they are hiding this and that. Nothing kills more writers than fear.

I do not know of any great writer who writes to hide or protect him or herself from what he or she knows to be the truth, at least not intentionally.

Walking in the woods today, I made an important decision, and I want to share it. I am going to participate in the political process this year. This country has been so good to me, my parents and grandparents, my child. I care about it and want to do what i can to help it through a difficult time.

So I am going to choose a candidate to support for President this year, and I will get engaged in my own way. I don’t plan to write about my decision on the blog, the blog is not about politics, there are many places to go for that. I’m not joining the left or the right, my choice will be the free choice of a free man, made independently and from the heart.

I have many things to write about, I don’t care to climb in that boat.

I will not argue my decision, not here, not on social media, not in living rooms or with friends. This is one of those personal decisions for me, it is not a process I especially need to share. People have to make up their own minds about these things, we are drowning in rage and argument, I won’t be adding to it.

It is a hard decision for me,  in some ways a difficult one, in some ways a simple one – I have strong values and beliefs, and it ought to be easy to decide who shares most or all of them.

I have avoided politics for some time now, it has become something I don’t recognize or feel comfortable talking about. But I want to do the right thing, i want to be there when it matters, I want my daughter or granddaughter, if there is to be one. to know that I tried to do the right thing when the right thing is really important to do.

There might be some organic reason I need to refer to this, and if so, I’ll do it. Otherwise, it is a matter of the heart for me, my own humble stab at being patriotic. I wish you all good luck in your choices. To me, the left-right thing is a poison, an abandonment of the mind and free well. I’ll navigate it as best I can, given the choices I’m offered.

I was a political writer and editor for awhile, but the politics I covered was very much different from the politics I read and hear about now, I have to find my place in all of this. It matters.

I will work hard to stay away from anger and despair, one way or the other. In our lifetime, politics is a spiritual challenge, and grace is participating without ever becoming what I fear and hate. Humanity is my ideology, I think, my left and my right. I wonder who will even have me.