Interstate 40 is a straight shot out of Tennessee. It spits you out in the mountains of North Carolina where you dribble down to Asheville, switch to I-26, and slide on down to the foothills of South Carolina. I drove that familiar path last week as the sun set behind me. I was trying to make up distance and trying to make up time. The home that is my wife and sons was on the other side.

It's 356 miles from where I live in Nashville to where I used to live in Spartanburg. Driving solo between the two, it doesn't feel that long. But there are times when I can feel every inch of the distance. That has been difficult; more so than I thought it would be. Don't get me wrong. I knew it would be tough. When you're not with your wife/best friend of 11 years and the two souls that you swore you'd protect with everything, the absence is going to weigh on you. Yet that distance is a load to bear. When I left to go back to Nashville and my youngest whimpered, "I'm going to miss you," it darn near destroyed me.

This is the video of my ordination service back in October for those who would like to see it. Mainly you'll probably want to see my sister Shari Hunt, Michael Wright, and Luke Justice play "Helplessness Blues," "Beautiful Things," and "This Road." Thanks again to all of those who were part of this meaningful day.

This week my prayers have steered into the skid that is the fallout from the election. A prayer that keeps popping up in my mind is one commonly known as "The Prayer of Saint Francis." Francis probably didn't author this prayer, but it echoes the ethos of a man whose faith and compassion for those around him is still a marvel today. I love this prayer and have for many years. In a time when people are frightened and filled with turmoil, "Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace" seems like the thing to pray.

It's what I want to pray, but parts of it are so difficult. It's not the beginning. I want to sow love where there is hatred, pardon where there is injury, faith where there is doubt, hope where there is despair, light where there is darkness, and joy where there is sadness. I desire that with my entire being.

Jim and Liam,

It's well after midnight and it looks like Donald Trump will be elected president. From where I sit right now, that reality is frightening. I don't think this is the end of the world or that our country will be destroyed though I confess there is a small part of me that worries about that. At the very least I worry about the people in our country who live in the margins and are the most vulnerable.

What is most upsetting to me is that this man said horrible and untrue things about women, immigrants, African-Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, and the disabled throughout his campaign. These things weren't hidden. We all knew about them. He has lied. He has been a bully. And a plurality of this beautiful country I love thought him fit to lead our nation.

It has been a long, strange, crazy, disheartening, occasionally encouraging, downright weird election season. And it all ends today. Hypothetically. Please God, let it end today. Tomorrow we should be able to take a collective breath and lower our controversial conversations to whether it's okay for people to be playing Christmas music in early November (It is, but does that mean one should?). 

But I have some bad news. It doesn't end today. This country will still be bitterly divided tomorrow. This election cycle has revealed an ugly stain of discord in our national dialogue. People of opposing viewpoints will not talk to one another. They won't even validate the right for their opponent to disagree. The campaign has also exposed the vile racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and other prejudices that are far more common than any of us would like to admit. None of that vanishes tomorrow.

The other day, I hazily recalled reading in high school US History textbook that women buried their Bibles for fear that Thomas Jefferson would do something awful to the Good Book. This recollection led me to googling the phrase that appears as the title of this post and discovering on this page that this craziness actually happened in the Presidential Election of 1800. It also led me to putting together an attack

Dr. Timothy Dwight, the President of Yale, predicted in (unfortunately) a sermon that an America under the Democratic-Republican candidate would see all Bibles burned, women and children forced into legal prostitution, and the country would basically be turned into Western France (there has always been someone in this country who didn't like France).