President's Message

The delicate fabric of our young nation appears so stretched right now as to be on the verge of ripping. For almost a year, COVID-19 has squeezed us in a tight-fisted, two-handed grip. One hand ravages our bodies, while the other hits our pocketbooks. Social distancing and mask wearing effectively reduces the spread of this virus, but these are only partial remedies that come with serious side effects.

These remedies push us out of the commons almost as much as the pandemic itself. The places where we once shared the American experience with our neighbors are now viewed as risky places to be avoided. Our sidewalks are empty and our town squares silent. Our shops and restaurants are closed. If we are lucky, our houses of worship have figured out how to livestream their services. But we know that watching church on a laptop will never take the place of singing shoulder to shoulder or praying together on our knees. We cannot shake hands with a new acquaintance or hug a friend without wondering if we were exposed in that one touch. It is perfectly understandable to crouch in our foxholes until the battle is over to save our own lives. But human beings are innately social animals, so is it really any wonder that some of us would reject all this isolation and gather in groups despite the enormous personal risk?

Restricting social human contact for such a long time has added fuel to the currently raging fire of a deeply divided America that saw blood shed on some of the most sacred American ground. This fire didn’t start quickly and it did not come from one source. It has smoldered for at least 30 years coinciding with the start of the first Gulf War. Between then and now, our country has suffered through two unpopular wars, two disputed Presidential elections, the September 11 terrorist attack, a bungled response to Hurricane Katrina that cut across racial lines, the election of the first black President, the Great Recession, introduction of same sex marriage, Black Lives Matter, and rancorous debate over the Second Amendment spurred by tragically commonplace school shootings.

The people we observe when peering across no man’s land from our virtual foxholes quickly begin to look like the enemy. Will this ever end? Can we make any sense of it all? Will we survive this crisis to grow stronger and closer together? Surely the answer to these questions is yes. The vexing question is when, when, when? 

We will turn the corner when, and only when, we stop shouting long enough to listen to the voices in the other foxholes – fully listen – with the heartfelt desire to understand. On Christmas Eve in 1914, in an unofficial and unsanctioned temporary truce, German and British soldiers alike laid down their weapons and emerged into no man’s land to share hymns, rations, and whiskey. They even played some friendly soccer matches. Not a shot was fired.

We will make sense of it all when, like the Good Samaritan, we put ourselves in harm’s way to help someone who may hate us enough to hurt us. We will begin to understand when we begin binding our neighbors’ wounds without expectation of recompense or accolade. Credit unions know how this works. The people helping people model relies upon the balance of individual accountability to a community, and the community’s commitment to treat the individual fairly and equitably. A credit union’s membership knows no political party.

That we, as a nation, can heal from our self-inflicted wounds may be the underpinning of American Exceptionalism. We have improved ourselves, inch by painstaking inch, through the most difficult times. And we will do it again. The wound is deep right now and, as we all saw last week, the blood is far too real. We have been bleeding real blood for some decades now. It is time to start the healing.

Consider Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address delivered in 1865 at the end of the Civil War. In a stroke of brilliant presidential leadership, he held both the North and the South accountable for the scourge of war and called for mutual forgiveness. His mere 701 words turned Americans’ focus to the hope of a more united future with this fitting ending:

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to achieve and cherish a lasting peace among ourselves and with the world. to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

When we dare to examine ourselves through the eyes of our adversaries, when we seek the truth in their position, our perspective refracts to reveal the bounty of a diverse community. To get there, we must first exit our echo chambers and climb out of our foxholes. On that same French battlefield where the British and German soldiers broke bread and sang Silent Night together, they picked up their weapons and resumed killing each other the very next day. That is not the American way. May we find in this moment the collective strength to move our nation forward by one more painstaking inch.

Cooperatively,
Bruce