Love More

The recent death of Congressman Paul Mitchell, a Republican from Michigan, both moved and inspired me. Mitchell served two terms in Congress and retired in 2020 after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. He made headlines for leaving the Republican party to become an Independent after the 2020 election fraud claims.

Last week Jake Tapper aired an interview with Congressman Mitchell posthumously—an interview that was recorded from his hospice bed. He wanted his last message to have the full force of his life’s work. His words resonated with my own search for a change in our country and in our collective work of uniting. He was clear and to the point.

Our country is “struggling” he said, and needs a course correction. Politics should not be about how to “protect a candidate, not simply for raw political power, and that’s what I feel is going on,” he said with an oxygen tube under his nose. “I’ve had enough.”

Mitchell left office because of cancer but his frustration with our culture of contempt and disdain was the focus of his parting message. We’re “struggling because people can’t accept that they believe in different things and look for what they agree on,” he told Tapper. “It’s ‘I won’t talk to you.’ It’s breaking up families.”

But then it seemed like Mitchell shifted gears and offered words that seemed to come from deep within him. “Learn to understand people and judge less. Love more. And let’s have less hatred. It’s destroying our society.”

“Love more.” I don’t think Mitchell is talking about love as a feeling or personal relationship. I think he was talking about reality itself—about the force that Dr. Barbara Holmes refers to when she says, “[Love is] the greatest mystery of all. Not love as a warm and fuzzy feeling, but love as the animating force that holds us together. If we can believe that we are loved just as we are and that everything else is equally loved, we unveil a cosmic reality that is life-giving…” A country that is built on that animating force holding us together is exactly what we need now. I know that doesn’t sound like political discourse but why not? Dr. King risked his life for it. Gandhi led with it. Pope Francis pleads for it. So what’s stopping us right now from infusing our political culture with love?

The risks of ignoring Mitchell’s plea are greater than the risks of believing in it. Our current politics have created a loneliness epidemic in our country, perhaps the most painful indication of our lack of trust and connection with each other. In the face of the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan, we’re shouting each other down in accusation and blame rather than teaming up in service to those in need. As our children return to school looking for stability and support, we’re giving them exactly the wrong example by senselessly attacking our teachers and school leaders.

All of this reminds me of what our work at UNITE suggests is a fundamental principle of transformation: treating each other with dignity. Tom Rosshirt, a UNITE co-founder, and I frame it this way: The country can’t unite around a policy agenda, because it wouldn’t honor the diversity of our views. We can’t unite around something extraordinary, because it should be something each of us can do. We can’t unite around something trivial, because it has to make an impact. So we settled on this: uniters shouldn’t ask anyone to give up any of their values or beliefs, just add one: that everyone should be treated with dignity. Let’s unite around this.

I’m sending my condolences and prayers to Congressman Mitchell’s family and friends, and my gratitude to him. “Love more” might not sound like a political slogan in today’s culture, but that’s a big part of the problem. “Love more” might sound more like a mystic than a congressman. What, you might wonder, could “love more” possibly mean in terms of real action to bring about more justice and joy?

The French essayist, Charles Peguy, wrote, “everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.” “Love more” may well be the words of Paul Mitchell experiencing his own mystical moment and, from it, pleading with us to see what he sees and act with a new lens to create a new politics.

Mitchell won’t be the person to create that new politics. That’s up to us.