By Rev. Nate Klug

Editor’s note: Rev. Klug, co-minister at First Parish in Lincoln with his wife Kit Novotny, gave this sermon on November 10, 2024. 

There’s an ice-breaker game that I learned from my wife Kit. It comes from the improv comedy world, and it offers a great way of sharing a little about yourself in a group but not getting too carried away.

The person who’s speaking follows a prompt. They begin: “I could tell you a story about…” But — and this is the key — they don’t actually tell the story. All they do is complete that first sentence: “I could tell you a story about the time when I knocked my front teeth out on the playground as a kid.” Or, “I could tell you about the day last year when I knew the Celtics might actually win the championship.”

This week, if I were playing that game — if I were in the mood to play a game — I might say, “I could tell you a story about how I felt when I woke up on Wednesday morning and checked my phone. I could tell you about one of our daughters bursting into tears at the breakfast table. I could tell you about the articles I’ve read since then trying to explain what happened. I could tell you how I learned that one party’s candidate earned about the same number of total votes as the last time he ran, in 2020. And one party’s candidate earned many millions fewer than in 2020.

“I could tell you how I learned that 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. The majority of people in the richest country in the world right now lack the privilege of turning their work and their time into any kind of savings for the future. I could tell you many stories.” And you, of course, could tell me yours.

Part of the beauty and the challenge of a democracy is the plurality of stories contained within in it. “I hear America singing,” Walt Whitman wrote, “the varied carols I hear.” As you might know, during the Civil War, during the greatest test this country has faced, Whitman volunteered as a nurse. His younger brother George was wounded in the fighting. Walt rushed to Washington to find him. He ended up staying three years. He visited and cared for over 600 people. Sat with soldiers in the hospital. Helped them get letters home. “And with the dying,” Whitman wrote, “I generally watch’d all night. I took up my quarters in the hospital… and slept there.”

Those three years, Whitman went on, “I consider the most profound lesson of my life. I can say that in my ministerings, I comprehended all whoever came my way, northern or southern, and slighted none. It has given me my most fervent views of the true ensemble and extent of the States.”

The true ensemble and extent of the States. Whitman’s America is not ours, of course. And yet I find something useful in Whitman’s curiosity, his appreciation for the vastness and strangeness of our country and its ongoing capacity to surprise.

I know some of us feel lost today. Some of us may feel like we don’t recognize the country we were born in or have lived in for many years. Listen to the