This is one of the spectacular views I drive past every day in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, where I am working for the Obama campaign.  It reminds me about the big view.  Today was a day that I needed to take a big view.

While canvassing, I went to a house and knocked on the door.  I heard a lot of barking and yelling and the door was yanked open by a purple faced woman who released a very excited boxer.  WHAT!? she said.  I said hello my name is Paula and I am with the Obama campaign how are you today.  NO OBAMA NO OBAMA, she yelled and pulled the dog inside and slammed the door.

My insides did a sort of queasy stagger as I walked away toward the next house.  I felt like I had had a toxic overload and couldn’t quite find my breath.  My first impulse was to say to myself, it isn’t you and it isn’t personal.   Then I wanted to cover myself with white light or take a hot bath.  I realized that I was trying to run away from the experience.  I was trying to push it away, which was actually just bringing it closer.   So I just welcomed it.  I welcomed all the wrath and the indignity and all the stories about her and myself and all the things that it could possibly mean and all my own feelings including wanting to erase her from the earth.  I felt somewhat better.

Then I asked myself if I could just see through all of that, just see what was on the other side.  And there was the brilliant sun illuminating the leaves, the sparkle of light on some flowers at the next house, and my own quiet breathing.  And like that I dropped the whole thing.

I learned to do this when I was studying the Sedona Method.  It is a way to release.  It is a way to take a wider, bigger view, instead of shutting myself in a closet with all that reaction and resistance.

Politics seem to ignite some of the worst impulses in humans.  It becomes personal, acrimonious, angry, irrational.  It is because it is about dividing, not uniting.  That is the close up view.  One bigger view is that the political process is in fact a process of individuation that we are doing as a people, as a tribe, as a nation.  We are growing, and our bones hurt.  Unfortunately, whipped into the mix, the mess, is the necessity of sorting truth from lies, generous intention from craven greed.  That is the confusing part of the growing pains we feel, and the part that splits us from each other, rather than helping us to find each other in friendship, in kindness.

I found myself here as I was canvassing today.  All day I had been practicing savoring little things.  The way the light would fall on a tree, a street.  A sudden view, or the look on someone’s face as we spoke.

It takes a lot for me to do this door-to-door thing.  I am moderately phobic about who is behind the door.  What I might see or encounter.  Mostly it is fine, and no one has yelled at me or been abusive.  I did have one unexpected encounter with a very large, un-neutered mastiff, but it turned out to be fine.  The owner was a biker type who said he would not vote and if he did it would not be for Obama.  I didn’t argue.  Okey doke, I said, I am sorry to hear that.

People’s houses reflect them, I believe.  I am always anxious when I approach a house that has a hoarder feel to it.  If it is really unnerving, I mark the form “inaccessible.”  Mostly, people have welcome mats and signs, and small, gracious gestures of the season – pumkins, flowers, and some Halloween decorations.  I am always aware that I am entering their space, that it is their home, their domain, and I have not been invited.  Mostly, when they see me – my blue glasses on my nose, my spikey hair and my manilla folder, they are welcoming and we talk.

I cannot get used to the answer, “I don’t vote.”  It is often said with some pride and disdain.  To vote is to represent yourself, to say,”these things matter to me.”  It is participating, showing up, being all in.

Today I spoke with two young men in their mid-twenties.  Both were undecided.  One was so thoughtful, so intelligent and so emotionally connected that I wanted to talk to him longer, know more about his thinking.  He said that he had a 6-month old daughter and he had to think about what would be best for her.  That was the doorway I had been waiting for,  Daughters, let me tell you about daughters.  The other was flirty and funny and said he had voted for Obama in 2008.  But he didn’t know, didn’t plan to vote.  By the end of our brief conversation, I felt him soften, shift, re-consider.

I genuinely like these people about 90% of the time.  And I like myself for liking them.  More tomorrow. . .

I spent about five hours canvassing today in Laconia, NH.  Mostly Obama supporters, with a few undecideds.  A few people who said they did not want to vote this time.  I asked why.  The answer is that they felt disillusioned by both candidates.  Really, I said.  Do you care about pay equity?  Do you care about women’s health issues?  Do you have daughters, granddaughters, sisters, mothers, aunts, women friends? Are you a big fan of Mad Men as a real life experience?  Do you want to go back to the 50’s?

One woman said well yes, she would reconsider.  She seemed tired.  I felt tired.  I am tired of having to re-visit these old, ought-to-be settled issues. Another woman said she did not believe in abortion.  I said neither do I, but I do not want someone else’s religious beliefs dictating the kind of health care or reproductive rights choices that are available to me, my daughters or anyone else!

An elderly gentleman said that he is supporting the President because he lived in Massachusetts during the Romney years.  It’s not his state, and he did nothing good there, he said.  He told me that during his four-year term, Romney spent more than 400 days away on vacation!

Tomorrow more canvassing and phone banks in the evening.  And more stories as I find them.