I have never been drawn to patriotic chest-thumping or flag waving, I must confess that I have never really had to think all that much about my original faith and its history. The religious figure I have always been the most drawn to is Christ, the real one, not the one politicians and feckless religious people hide behind to further their greed and ambition, or lust for power.

Now, this weekend especially, I am thinking about my country, its values, my heritage and about hypocrisy, perhaps the only thing I truly hate in this world.

And this has been a very good and affirming weekend for me. Thrilling is the word that keeps coming to mind.

Today, I was much uplifted by two things.

One was a letter I received from a very devoted and conservative Presbyterian pastor I met a few years ago while I was still living in West Hebron on the first Bedlam Farm. She was walking up the hill with her dog, visiting a friend. We stopped and talked about dogs, religion, life. I remember the conversation well, Maria says I have a soft spot for Presbyterian pastors in the country, and it is true, they do a lot of good.

The pastor is head of a very Republican, very conservative congregation. We have stayed in touch, almost entirely through e-mail and some telephone calls. She is always trying to help her congregants in one way or another, getting them a dog, trying to pay their vet bills, seeking animal therapy for them.

She wrote to say she remembered my farm fondly, “the braying of the donkeys, your wonderful stories of farm life…I am really writing to thank you for your blog post from yesterday, “Comfort On A Sad Day.”  She shared my lament of a heavy heart yesterday, she said, and “truth be told, what I would really like to preach this morning is your post. I am thankful that the lectionary is Jesus’ Beatitudes and Micah’s 6:8- “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with God.”

I love this idea for me, for everyone, of acting justly and loving mercy and walking humbly with  God. This is precisely what I wish for myself, exactly what the true Christ preached and stood for and yes, died for.

And I loved her note. Words do matter still, and so does truth. Her message was a sign to me, a signal.

I have many good friends up here who are Presbyterians, they did not vote the way I voted, they do not share many of my beliefs. I have great respect for them, they are not bigots, racists or gullible people. They were left behind and hurting and wanted real change. In the country, the Presbyterian Faith is strong and unyielding, they take Jesus Christ seriously.

But they are not hypocrites.

Like many Christians, they have long worked hard to help refugees and immigrants, bring them to America, offer them comfort and safety. Mercy is an integral part of their faith. They don’t try to rationalize Jesus, to fit him into their politics and ambitions, to use him to make excuses for their lives.

To me, they are true Christians, their faith is their truth and their guide. Their God asks much of them, and they deliver in their lives.

A number of them contacted me yesterday, as did the pastor,  to thank me for what I wrote and to say how pained and saddened they were to see that we, as a nation, were abandoning countless women, children, men and families to awful suffering in the cruelest and most unthinking and unnecessary way.

To a one, my friends – and my pastor’s congregants – believe that to be a Christian is to help the poor, ease  suffering, act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with their God. They want the refugees to come here, to find refuge.

I was so moved by the pastor’s letter that I went to an antique jewelry store in Brattleboro, Vt. and bought a cross and I will wear it the next few months, even years, until I feel I have my country back, and that our better angels have saved us from darkness. The cross will remind me to keep my focus,  on mercy and love and humility, I hope, on Christ’s message.

And not on argument and judgement and grievance.

The pastor and I are having coffee soon. She said she is going to visit the refugee gift page set up on Amazon by the U.S. Committee on Refugees and Immigration to help the refugees – almost all women and children – who have already arrived in the United States and desperately need help. We have already filled one warehouse with gifts, but the need is great. Now, on top of all of their suffering, they face permanent separation from their families.

I was born Jewish, but have never felt comfortable in that faith, while I am not religious I have always felt more at home with the spirit and teachings of Christ than almost anyone else.  I don’t know if he was the son of God or not, it is not really important to me. I was so happy to hear from some of my Presbyterian friends – these are no liberal Democrats or progressives – that the values I love were also the values they love and retain and will fight to keep.

A lot separates us, a lot unites us.

As a Jew whose family was nearly obliterated in the last century, immigration is an issue that strikes close to home.  I do take it personally. I would not be writing this today if not for America, and its fabled ethos of welcoming the needy and the suffering. My grandmother would never have survived where she was.

Every Jewish family remembers and is  reminded of the people who perished in the most horrible ways because they were turned away and denied refuge by countries that could easily have helped them and taken them in. To be living now in one of those countries  is almost unendurable for me. I cannot abide it, or make excuses for it, and won’t. This is not, for me, an argument.

This weekend, our new President has given me a rich and remarkable gift.

He has challenged me to consider and grasp what it is I love about this country, something I just never had to think about that much, I so took it for granted. I do not take it for granted any longer, I see what it is I love about my country, and I will work hard to see that it perseveres and endures. And I will work hard for it.

I am especially grateful to see that so many other people – including many who have ideas that are very different from me – share these values as well. There is, in fact, an American ethos beyond the shallow raging of the left and the right. This was a good day for me.

I was also thrilled – that is the right word, really, it was thrilling – to see so many young people come out to demand justice and mercy. It is always the young who begin revolutions, today had the feeling of something exhilarating. The creaky old men like me chasing after them with their walking sticks when they finally wake up.

And this weekend, I believe, a true revolution has begun. Another American Revolution, coming to remind us of our common values and beliefs. Of who we really are. That is what makes America so special, why I love it so much. I’m in.

I have this fantasy of marching down the highway with my Presbyterian friends and fellow humans, of holding hands, singing hymns, clapping and cheering and laughing, coming together on behalf of love, mercy and humility. The fossilized ideas of the left and the right would just melt away and flow into a raging stream.

I have a problem with hypocrisy, I have long tried to get past it, but so far, have not been able to do it. Only the hypocrite, wrote Hannah Arendt, is really rotten to the core. In politics, she wrote, love is a stranger, and when it intrudes upon it nothing is being achieved except hypocrisy.

So I will keep on  wearing my cross to remind me of what Jesus Christ, the real one, said:  to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with my God. To remind me to stand up for my values, but not denigrate the beliefs of others, to live by example, not argument, to do good and show mercy.

This is what my faith requires of me.

I am happy to be reminded once more than there are so many people of good faith who are not hypocrites. Some politicians as well. I think Jesus Christ would be content.