Now What?

I decided not to decorate for Christmas this year.  After all, with the state of our country and world what is the point in celebrating? However, after a few days of sitting with my despair, I decided that making our home a bright, happy, and hospitable place was still important.  I could still light up our little corner of a very dark world. 

I sense that most of us are living in some sense of apprehension  about what the days ahead will hold.   For me it often feels like I have a low grade fever.   This election was certainly not the beginning of our darkness. Our world has been changing for a long time.  Our institutions (healthcare, education, religion, government) are fraying around the edges and have been showing cracks in their foundations for a long time.  The planet  we call home is literally groaning as we insist on taking more from her than she can replenish.  Since the recent election we are facing a troop of characters who will “run our government” with disregard for the elderly, people of color, the earth, the sick, and our allies overseas.  Their goal is clearly to enhance their own power and bank accounts.  

Let’s face it.  Things are changing and will continue to change.   The status quo we have enjoyed is over.  So, how should we live into this new reality?

We can respond to this mess with despair, or distraction, or denial.  I certainly have indulged in all three.  But I would suggest none of these responses help make us or our world any better. 

Or, we can respond with HOPE 

Let’s first look at some things that HOPE is NOT. 

 Hope is not a naive conviction that things will just turn out ok. This kind of hope could be called wishful thinking or optimism. 

Hope is also not attaching to a desired outcome.

Attaching hope to a certain outcome can create massive anxiety because, we ultimately know we cannot control circumstances.  I HOPE my cancer will go away, I HOPE I will win the lottery, I HOPE my child will be safe at school, I HOPE the election will turn out a certain way.   We cannot achieve any these outcomes by hoping and they may never be our reality.  

Perhaps we need a sense of hopelessness before we can land on a hope that makes sense. Pema Chodrin, the Buddhist nun and author, defines hopelessness as “Relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves. In this kind of relaxation there is an appreciation of impermanence and change.” Sinking into the uncertainty of this moment in history allows us to move to a different kind of hope that is both potent and vital. 

Hope can be seen as an act of defiance.  

We can choose to defy paralyzing complacency or a sense of defeatism.  We can refuse to slip into our easy chairs of despair and resignation.  Instead we can choose to stand on our feet, brimming with defiance and creative energy.  

Vaclav Havel said, “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing regardless of how it turns out.”  

Another author and activist, (Sarah Kendzior) , said “I believe in the truth of doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, let the chips fall where they may.”   

What would that kind of hope look like in our lives right now?  What is the “right” thing we can do in defiance of the darkness around us?  

In Brian McLaren’s book, “Life after Doom,” he likens our possible responses to our present world like being on different teams.  

“My choice is between Team Cruelty, Team Apathy, Team Selfishness, Team Indifference OR….Team Wisdom, Team Courage, and Team Kindness”. 

We are being invited to live into this present moment in history as humans who choose to live in defiant HOPE, whatever the outcomes might be. 

When we let go of our attachment for desired outcomes, and our personal risk assessment, we are free to live into this darkness with the energy of fierce defiance.   We can choose to respond to every darkness with light and every situation with love.  AND, therein, lies our marvelous victory.  

I think of Jesus as He lived into a corrupt religious system, a cruel and powerful governmental system, and huge inequity between the rich and the poor.  He saw the sick, widows, the “other” treated as “throw aways”.  Into this darkness He just kept responding with radical love.  But quite honestly, it didn’t really turn out that well, did it?  After all, He was tortured and crucified by these very systems.  Right? Or…..was He victorious?  Was the great victory He won that no matter what happened, LOVE COULD NOT BE KILLED?

That phrase has been repeating itself over and over again in my head and heart. 

No matter what, LOVE cannot be killed.   

No matter what, LOVE cannot be killed.

No matter what, LOVE cannot be killed. 

From His bleeding and swollen mouth He told the thief dying next to Him that he would join Him in paradise that day.  As He looked out at a crowd that jeered and cheered, or deserted Him, He said “Father, forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing”.

Love could not be killed. 

Nelson Mandela,  Martin Luther King, Ghandi, the Freedom Riders, the lunch counter sit-in activists taught us love cannot be killed even though your head is bashed in, or you are in prison, or even if you are killed. Perhaps, the outcome of their actions did not seem worth the price they paid.  But in all these circumstances they choose not to add to the darkness around them by compromising their own souls.  They refused to let love be killed. 

Defiant hope for us may not entail life-threatening choices, or maybe someday it will.  But in the meantime, defiant hope can be the choice to continue loving those who voted differently that we did.  Or it can mean volunteering for an organization that may not survive budget cuts.  It may be handing out soup to the endless line of homeless people.  It will look differently for all of us, but it will not look like inaction, or despair or wishful thinking.  It will not look like giving up and giving in. It will look like the choice to decorate my house for Christmas in spite of the darkness around me. It will be the intentional choice to light up our corner of the world however and whenever we can.  It will look like a total disregard of the outcome. It will look like people who refuse to let love be killed. 

I close with this prayer:

Lord, as I see humans all around me doubling down on “more”…more retribution, more money, more exploitation for the planet and of people, more power, more war.

I pray that I will be able to embrace “less”…less thought of self preservation, less pessimism, less anger, less grasping to the status quo.

Fill me with a  different vision of “more”…  A vision that more love matters now. And give me more hope to march into the mess brandishing weapons of tenderness and love and kindness and a passion for justice. 

And may this kind of “more”be gloriously manifest on this earth.