(RNS) — I’ve been thinking about my grandfather a lot this election season, how I might emulate him and show up for others. Gone now for 18 years, his voice is an occasional presence in my heart and head, especially around the holidays. But this season, it’s been different. I feel anew his constant subtle, calm, clear presence.
It started the day after a family wedding. We had a reunion of sorts in Louisville, Kentucky, watching our baby cousin get married to his wonderful bride. My aunt convened us the next morning to open a time capsule that our (grand)parents put together around the year 2000. The sealed little box was meant to be opened together as a family 25 years later. We didn’t think they would’ve minded us opening it a few months early — we were all together and in a joyous mood.
Inside the box was a golf ball, a TV Guide, a couple smaller items and a copy of their local Springfield News-Sun, the paper of record for their industrious Ohio town, and the site of so many fond childhood memories for those of us gathered around.
There was also a tape cassette they had recorded for all of us. It was surreal and sweet to hear their beloved, warm voices celebrating their life together and each one of us. It was a blessing to hear these cherished voices from before and beyond, speaking to us in the here and now, about what truly matters: family, community, neighborhood and country. There wasn’t a dry eye among us sipping coffee and sharing doughnuts in that hotel courtyard.
Listening to my grandpa’s voice and leafing through the old Springfield newspaper from 2000, I found myself wondering what my grandfather would have thought about all the attention and division afflicting Springfield today, when the presidential election has turned the town into a battleground for our divisions as a country, with hate and hope around new Haitian neighbors vying for our common attention.
I suddenly remembered one of my last visits with Grandpa, mere months before he passed from cancer. We were driving around town, passing the Little Caesars off East Home Road, where we’d picked up pizza so many times on the way to the bowling alley. There was Snyder Park, the site of many American Cancer Society Walk/Runs, around the bend, as well as the manufacturing plant where my grandfather had worked for so many years.
He was laser-focused on one thing that afternoon: getting out to vote for a local election. Back at their house that morning, I had spotted former Clinton White House aide George Stephanopoulos’ latest book on the coffee table. Myself a committed liberal, I wondered if Grandpa was going to vote Democrat. Then I remembered a year or so before, I had pulled down from his bookshelf a memoir by James Baker, Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff. I thought, “Who knows? Maybe he’s voting Republican.” We didn’t talk about it.
Remembering that story now, I see clearly how little it mattered. What mattered to my grandfather was that he was exercising his civic duty and sacred right to vote, casting a ballot he knew counted.
What mattered was the way my grandfather lived, knowing and caring for his neighbors, fighting for his colleagues at the plant in times of economic downturn, playful, calm and kind with his grandkids. In the end, in our shared body politic, it’s character and commitment to one another that truly matter.
As I think about our own moment today, Grandpa’s voice and memory have been sweet reminders of the right priorities. I have no idea how he would vote if he were heading to the ballot box this year. I do know what mattered to him was what comes before and beyond the ballot; he’d show up as a kind, calm neighbor living his values and being hopeful about them, not looking to alarm or tear down. In his own way, he was a bridge builder. Exactly the kind of folk we need more of in our communities this season; someone I’m still striving to be.
(Adam Nicholas Phillips is chief strategy officer at Interfaith America and co-hosts the “Faith In Elections” podcast. He is a former Biden-Harris official. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)