Tag Archives: Daniel Hunter

Inner health prevents the death of resistance: Four goals for the persistent

A life in the Spirit, Psychological growth, Spiritual direction, The Mission, , , , , , , , ,

Last week, I suggested to several clients that their anxiety and short-tempered reactions were partly about living under the “Trump Cloud.” We are all there.

I, for one, am convinced the president presides over a sociopathic corruption scheme — so you can see what my cloud looks like! Others may be less interested or engaged than I am, or even in favor of a Trump autocracy — but even the 41% who approve of him live under the endless disruption barging into every day. The last few weeks have been dominated by a huge, instant war and further revelations from the Epstein files about Trump’s sexual relations with young girls. It is overwhelming for us all.

As a result, we seem more unhinged. For instance, the most interesting thing that happened to me yesterday was coming to a complete, inexplicable halt on the onramp to 76 from 676 in downtown Philly. This is where the two-lanes of freeway condense into one. It is always a jam up and frustrated people often do less-than-sane things there. But this was unusual. We must have been stuck for ten minutes (or so it seemed), so some people got out of their cars to see what was the matter, so I did too. It appeared to me that the sportscar had tried to squeeze in and the SUV bumped it to protect its right to the lane. The two drivers were out of their cars and arguing, letting the rest of us sit. Word was, the SUV would not give up his info. They were waiting for the police. The sportscar was convinced to pull over and let us pass, so I got by and did not see what finally happened.  But I still wonder, “What are we coming to? Were these guys so angry and distrustful, now so sociopathically tutored, that they, too, were claiming territory and didn’t care what happened to the rest of us?”

Stranger things are likely to happen under the cloud

What do we do to survive this era and help make a change? Here is how this post answers that question: We need to heed the many reminders about how spiritual and psychological health leads to good social change.

Yes, there are loads of strategies for how to resist effectively and how to build the future. But all of them are founded on our inner truth and love. Daniel Hunter says: “Authoritarian power is derived from fear of repression, isolation from each other and exhaustion at the utter chaos. We’re already feeling it. Thus, for us to be of any use in a Trump world, we have to pay grave attention to our inner states, so we don’t perpetuate the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion or constant disorientation.”

Trump’s second term arrived at a time of great social distrust — much of it amplified by him to gain power and wealth. But he did not generate our distrust. Across the board, society already had a reduced trust in traditional institutions. We distrust the media, medical professionals, experts and politicians – for good reasons, since they are cooperate stooges. But our distrust is deeper than that. We also distrust most local and neighborhood associations and membership groups, like churches, the PTA and all those new protest orgs. Whether from COVID or political polarization, a lot of us have even experienced reduced trust in friends and family. We can’t even trust predictable weather anymore.

You can track the development of our mistrust by noting the popularity of Stranger Things (Netflix 2016) which is about the power of human connection and courage in the face of the unknown and unexplained, and Game of Thrones (2011-19) which is about the struggle for the iron throne and how people who want power will do anything to get it, even in the face of the Great Other. Both juxtapose the normal and the paranormal as key parts of the show’s narrative and thematic structure. And both distill how nothing is what it seems to be — and so can’t be trusted.

The distrust spawned by the billionaire/hedge fund extraction project to break American democracy fueled the engine of autocracy because it makes us much easier to divide.  Trump’s tweets/rhetoric encourages it — telling people to distrust  immigrants,  Democrats, socialists, people from Chicago, women marchers, Mexicans, the press, Iranians, transpeople and so on. It becomes a social disease when people decide if a person is trustworthy on the basis of who they tell us not to trust! I spent a lot of my career as a pastor trying to create systems that provided an alternative to this distrust, but a lot of people did not trust me or the system I led, either. However, I persist.

Here are four basic suggestions for how to develop more inner resistance under the Trump cloud, which is not disappearing any time soon, beginning with regaining some trust for yourself.

Trust yourself

We have been gaslighted so thoroughly, it is very difficult to trust our own decisions, even our own thoughts. A lot of us are perfecting dissociation in a vain attempt to weather the trauma we live in.

Trust-building starts within each of us. We need to trust our own truth and love. If you are following Jesus you can trust His truth and love making you whole. Regardless, this development includes trusting your own eyes and conscience, as well as guarding your heart from the crazy-making. Like Elon Musk determined to break the government with DOGE, breaking your inner resistance to unreality is also part of the domination scheme. (Bernie Sanders recently had a chat with Claude about this). Always remember: YOU MATTER.

Trust building is trusting yourself and also being trustworthy.  We should be reliable friends, but all the parts of our inner selves should also be friends. We need to trust that the “I AM” of each of us is going to show up to help us flourish no matter what. We need an inner trust that acknowledges fear and lets that feeling pass through. We need trust that can endure the uncertainty that nags us. We need to let the “cloud” be real so we know a lot of the troubling things we feel are about the cloud, not us.

This trust building will take some time and effort, of course. We’ll need to take care of ourselves if we want the world to change. If you’re tired, take some rest. If you’re scared, make some peace. (Here is a nice list of suggestions for how to stay grounded [link]). A good starting point, for now, is to listen to the voice in you that seems the most trustworthy. Don’t keep checking your phone for validation, check yourself. Don’t keep reading this if you need to take a walk or go find a tree to feel.

Find others who you trust

We have been atomized and isolated so effectively a lot of us don’t even think about trusting people. We are on our own — and that emotional landscape we inhabit, inside and out, makes a big difference.

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt explored how destructive ideologies like fascism and autocracy need loneliness to grow. She used the word verlassenheit — often translated as loneliness — as a central ingredient. As she meant it, loneliness isn’t a feeling but a kind of social isolation of the mind. One’s thinking becomes closed off to the world and becomes dominated by a sense of being abandoned.

Arendt was talking about Hitler and Stalin, but she is describing the societal breakdown we’re all experiencing, too. Trump is working on the breakdown every day. The constant attacks on social systems: teachers, health care, civil servants, courts, etc. — make us turn away from leaning on each other and towards ideologically simple answers that increase isolation (e.g. “distrust government,” “MAGA is nuts,” “anyone who votes that way doesn’t care about me”).

We have to consciously bridge that distance. People are finding ways to do that. For instance, in my church, a couple of women started an action group. People who made pods during Covid are still travelling together. Indivisible and Singing Resistance are creating new groups all the time. Most of these little groups, like the one in our church, are lamenting how little we are doing. But our very existence is resistance.

Finding just a few people who you trust to regularly act with and touch base with is central to defeating autocracy. We need to use our mutual trust to explore our own thinking and support each other to stay sharp and grounded.

Grieve

No matter what we try to do, there is going to be loss. So we will need to grieve well to live well. We will need to save our capacity to compartmentalize, rationalize, intellectualize and ignore for things like working in a large corporate structure or sorting out the basement. If we use those capacities to defend against our feelings, grief can damage us body and soul like a Kona storm sitting over Hilo.

If you aren’t a “feelings person,” let me say it this way: The inability to grieve is a strategic error. After Donald Trump won in 2016, we all saw people who never grieved; they just worked harder or avoided harder. They didn’t look into their feelings and the future — and as a result they remained in shock. They are still saying, “I can’t believe he’s doing that.” Believe it. Grieve it.

The alternative to perpetual shock is grieving — quite deliberatively, if necessary. Start by naming and allowing the feelings which arise when you confront the “stranger things:”

  • Trump left the Paris Climate Agreement and California has a March heatwave.
  • I daydream about Trump. We all wake up to bat-shit crazy headlines each morning.
  • Trump builds giant detention center for Markwayne Mullin to oversee. The Pitt has ICE coming into the ER.
  • Now it is Iran, tomorrow it is Epstein, then maybe the elections will be invalidated.

Making such a list, especially with someone you trust is health-generating. We begin to identify the sadness, anger, numbness, shock, confusion and fear. We grieve. We come out of our daze and experience acceptance. [A Spell for Grief or Letting Go]

Release what you cannot change

We are so trained to believe our individual power is the most important thing in the world all we think we can do is control something or someone. And if you are as realistic as I think you are, you already admitted control is not working well.

During the rise of the Nazis, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote the Serenity Prayer, which AA loves so much:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Trump’s presidency is deliberately making activists, especially, and all of us, feel overwhelmed. There is so much we feel we need to do and it is hard to accept we cannot do it all – at least I feel that way.  For instance, this week my interest in plastics was revived in my overall despair about climate change in the middle of an oil war. So I took the hour it took to commit to a way to do my little part. But I also saw how few hours I had. Chaos is a friend of the autocrat. One way we can unwittingly increase that chaos is by jumping into the abyss of needing to do it all.

I cannot say I am completely successful at this, but I use my journal to help me sort out what is the best I can do instead of what is the most I can do — what am I given to do as opposed to what needs to be done. I suggest we all take ourselves seriously enough to get some clarity on what is important these days. If we are just coasting through, we might get run over. If we think we are a semi when we are a Civic, we may burn up the engine. If you are in a small group trying to do something meaningful, like in church, be sure to press for a focus, not just be a committee-full of people-pleasers attempting to be inclusive and just ending up an ineffective potpourri.

It is spiritual and psychological health that will lead to good social change. That means trusting ourselves, sticking with others we trust, grieving well and releasing what we cannot change. It requires at least that much of us. We all know people who think they can sit out this challenging time. I feel with them. But I am still patiently impatient for the goodness of God to be seen and respected and put into action in our warming, war-torn world. Nurture that inner life you’ve been given, the best you — it’s the key to making a difference when we really need something new.

Is the Inflation Reduction Act a climate game changer?

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Are the climate elements in the recently-passed “Inflation Reduction Act” a game changer? Or are they just a way to lessen the disastrous impact of the U.S. inaction over the past decade? Did you personally do anything to help us collectively stand in front of that inaction train as it carried the world toward a climatic wreck? Maybe you have been preoccupied. The news outlets probably won’t help your focus too much. Both newspapers I read put the news about the House passing this huge bill last week second to Donald Trump’s predictable, attention-grabbing violation of the law and the Republican defense of it. I suppose our leaders will be calling for war on each other when Mar-a-Lago is under rising seas.

The climate disaster is here. Temperatures soared across Europe, the US and much of the northern hemisphere this year – it’s a new normal. What scientists have predicted for decades is becoming palpable, indisputable. The deniers keep denying and the fossil fuel oligarchs won’t give up until all the oil is out of the ground and sold, but it is hard to argue against climate change when the Po and Colorado Rivers dry up.  The new, human-caused climate patterns have far-reaching effects – for the natural world, for global food supplies, for health, for infrastructure and for much more. UN chief António Guterres has likened the crisis to ”collective suicide.”

I hope you already knew all that and are figuring out what more you can do – even though we need massive systemic change, not just individual action. We are all in this together, but it is the systems and the leaders of them who must make the planet-changing alterations. Christians who love their Creator should be their main exhorters. But Christians in the US still generally think climate action is “liberal,” which is another atmosphere that burns me up. They are so individualistic and paranoid they think hunkering down in their bunkers will save their families.

Maybe they will change and care for creation. I know some who woke up long ago. You noticed I said “generally” a couple of sentences ago when I indicted “Christians” because I suspect some of you reading are Jesus followers who voted for Al Gore and still wince when you see Styrofoam. But, unfortunately, Christians are generally not known for being at the forefront of climate action

Celebrate climate action

I’m writing today to add a bit more to our knowledge of the massive budget bill the Congress squeezed by the uniformly-opposed Republicans. “Opposed Republicans” when it comes to environmental protection is a recent change, since some of the first environmental activists in government were Republicans. Richard Nixon organized the EPA! I don’t think the present crew in Congress are all opposed to climate action on principle. They are in a death match for instituting a minority government free of pesky laws (the flouting of which dares the FBI to raid your mansion).

I went looking for what was actually in the unfortunately-named Inflation Reduction Act and it was quite hard to find. The Democrats put out a summary but it doesn’t give many details. The House has another summary with more detail. Why do I think you should care about this?

  • Our empathy needs to expand. Overwhelm diminishes our capacity to care. It takes discipline to care about anyone but oneself and one’s own.
  • We face shame when we encounter change. It takes a lot of self and other awareness not to get stuck in resistance.

I think the Holy Spirit brings us into connection and expands our ability to love – even in the face of climate inaction.

Daniel Hunter encourages bird counters to celebrate (click for article)

Let’s look at the amazing and inadequate features

Energy experts assert the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 will help the United States cut greenhouse gas emissions about 40% below 2005 levels by the end of this decade. That puts the Biden administration within striking distance of meeting its goal to reduce greenhouse gases by 50% below 2005 levels by 2030 under the Paris climate agreement of 2016.

Pray with me, here, as I offer my own summary of the bill Biden will sign this week. The planet’s future is hanging in the balance.

Here are the main elements.

  1. It attempts to lower energy costs
  • Home energy rebate programs focused on low income consumers to electrify home appliances and retrofit homes for energy efficiency. ($9 billion)

Just in case you can’t see how rich the U.S. is, if you personally earned $1 million dollars a year, it would take a thousand years to make 1 billion.

  • Tax credits to make homes energy-efficient and fueled by clean energy — making heat pumps, rooftop solar, electric HVAC and water heaters more affordable. (Lasts ten years)

You can get an $8,000 tax credit to install a modern electric heat pump that can both heat and cool buildings. You could get $1,600 to insulate and seal your house to make it more energy efficient.

  • Tax credits for lower/middle income people to buy used clean vehicles ($4,000), or to buy new clean vehicles ($7500).

I apparently bought my new hybrid too soon.

  • Grant programs to make affordable housing more energy efficient. ($1 billion)
  1. It retreats from the global economy and encourages domestic production of climate related products
  • Tax credits to accelerate manufacture of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and processing of critical minerals. ($30 billion)

A piece about “critical minerals.”

  • Tax credits to build clean technology manufacturing facilities, like facilities that make electric vehicles, wind turbines and solar panels. (10 billion)
  • Money through the Defense Production Act for heat pumps and critical minerals processing. ($500 million)
  • Grants to retool existing auto factories to make clean vehicles, ensuring that auto manufacturing jobs stay in the communities that depend on them. ($2 billion)
  • Loans to build new clean vehicle manufacturing facilities across the country. ($20 billion)
  • Money to fund National Labs to accelerate breakthrough energy research. ($2 billion)
  1. It begins work to decarbonize the economy
  • Tax credits for clean sources of electricity and energy storage
  • Targeted grant and loan programs for states and electric utilities to accelerate the transition to clean electricity. ($30 billion)
  • Tax credits and grants for clean fuels and clean commercial vehicles to reduce emissions from all parts of the transportation sector.
  • Grants and tax credits to reduce emissions from industrial manufacturing processes, including almost $6 billion for a new Advanced Industrial Facilities Deployment Program to reduce emissions from the largest industrial emitters like chemical, steel and cement plants.
  • Money for Federal procurement of American-made clean technologies to create a stable market for clean products, including $3 billion for the U.S. Postal Service to purchase zero-emission vehicles. ($9 billion)
  • Money for a clean energy technology accelerator to support deployment of technologies to reduce emissions, especially in marginalized communities. ($27 billion)
  • A Methane Emissions Reduction Program to reduce leaks from the production and distribution of natural gas. The bill forces oil and gas companies to pay fees as high as $1,500 a ton to address excess leaks of methane, and undoes the 10-year moratorium on offshore wind leasing established under Trump.

Here is a little local color that includes methane capture.

  1. It includes a focus on environmental justice
  • Environmental and climate justice block grants will invest in community-led projects in marginalized communities (and the agencies poised to use this money) to address disproportionate environmental and public health harms related to pollution and climate change. ($3 billion)
  • Neighborhood grants will support equity, safety, and affordable transportation access. The aim is to reconnect communities divided by existing infrastructure barriers, mitigate negative impacts of transportation facilities or construction projects on marginalized communities, and support equitable transportation planning and community engagement activities. ($3 billion)
  • Grants to reduce air pollution at ports will support the purchase and installation of zero-emission equipment and technology. ($3 billion)
  • Money for clean heavy-duty vehicles, like school and transit buses and garbage trucks. ($1 billion)
  1. It pointedly includes farmers, forestland owners and rural communities
  • Money to support climate-smart agriculture practices. ($20 billion)
  • Grants to support healthy, fire resilient forests, forest conservation and urban tree planting. ($5 billion)
  • Tax credits and grants to support the domestic production of biofuels, and to build the infrastructure needed for sustainable aviation fuel and other biofuels.

This summary of tax implications tells you how complex this all is.

  • Grants to conserve and restore coastal habitats and protect communities that depend on those habitats. ($2.6 billion)
  1. It does not neglect the fossil fuel addiction companies

The big oil companies, fresh off their record-breaking pandemic profits, did not make a big push against the bill, which says volumes. The Democrats agreed to a number of fossil fuel and drilling provisions as concessions to Senator Manchin of West Virginia, a holdout from a state that is heavily dependent on coal and gas. The measure assures new oil drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Cook Inlet.  It expands tax credits for carbon capture technology that could allow coal or gas-burning power plants to keep operating with lower emissions. It instructs  the Interior Department to also hold auctions for fossil fuel leases if it approves new wind or solar projects on federal lands.

What do you think God thinks about all of this? What does Jesus want you to believe and do about it all? Let’s pray today and hope. We are the salt of this poor planet.