MEXICO CITY -- I surrender.
It's a simple concept, which also means it carries lots of complications. It's common to think of surrendering in military terms -- something you do when you've lost a war.
Surrendering can be very different. Surrendering is about realizing that what we keep doing isn't working.
So I say this in the context of the elections that just happened in the United States. One of the first conversations I had in Mexico City, where I'm visiting for a conference, involved the new mayor of New York City.
I must be honest, I almost forgot about Election Day because it was such a foregone conclusion. The mere fact that conservatives were talking about supporting Andrew Cuomo for mayor of New York was a sign that we were in totally different territory.
There's always hope, and so on one hand, I hear conservatives making dark jokes about communists in New York, and I see this election and so much else in recent politics as a tremendous opportunity. It's an opportunity to surrender.
This month is the 100th anniversary of Bill Buckley's birthday. I know I've mentioned this in columns before, but it bears repeating: Though he devoted his career to political thought, he also understood that there is so much more to life than just politics.
It's kind of as simple as that.
Think about surrender in a Christian context: "Jesus, I trust in you." That is one of the simplest declarations of faith one can make. Pope John Paul II made it famous, popularizing a Polish devotion to the divine mercy of Jesus, which is what the sacrament of confession is all about. People often think of it as some kind of shame or judgment. In fact, it is liberation. It is going to Jesus and recognizing that we can make mistakes for which we can be forgiven. We are made new. That's what religion is all about.
Human life is in some ways too important to be left to politics.
Some issues, like abortion or care for the needy, are too important to leave to Democrats and Republicans debating yet again, or one politician or another seeming to be the standard-bearer to an issue that is as intimate as it gets.
Buckley talked about how we don't actually need to reinvent the Beatitudes. However, he also said, at every time, we need to find a way to communicate them to the people and the circumstances right in front of us.
Can we find a way not to let politics take the lead when we are talking about human life, families and how expensive and difficult it can be to support a life-giving culture that ensures people have what they need to thrive?
How do we make our politics more humane? Pope Francis talked about the need for tenderness. You don't have to be a Catholic, a Christian, or a religious believer to understand that we are all in need of more tenderness. And so, I'm going to give it a try again, to surrender, to realize that I alone can't fix all the world's problems, but I can live my faith on a daily basis. I realize we have so much more work to do, but it's primarily going to come with humility and the kind of surrender that only makes sense in the light of eternity.
And so I'll pray for us all here in Mexico City. We can do this better with all our different beliefs. We can still do this better.
So be it.
(Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and author of the new book "A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living." She is also chair of Cardinal Dolan's pro-life commission in New York, and is on the board of the University of Mary. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.)
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