The notion that God is absent is the fundamental illusion of the human condition. —Thomas Keating
“Fundamental illusion” can be a way of life! But it does not have to be that way. Most of the wise people we all admire have a story about how they moved beyond their self-contained understanding to become who they became. Some found a hope deep inside that is vastly better than wishing and waiting for one’s illusions to be validated.
I think the best and deepest way that leads beyond ordinary, self-limited thinking and into hope is the way of meditation. Cynthia Bourgeault, my inspiration for this series, agrees:
Meditation, more than any other spiritual practice, nurtures the latent capacities within us that can perceive and respond to divine hope. In the classic language of our tradition, these capacities are known as the “spiritual senses.”
That little paragraph might have seemed so weird to a few of you, it drove you right back into your egoic thinking! So hang on.
“Egoic thinking” is another way of describing our limited, ordinary awareness. It simply means we humans have the capacity to stand outside ourselves and look at ourselves. As far as we know, we are the only species who can do this. Tigers don’t think, “I have a quick temper.” And whales don’t say, “I am really glad to be going north; I’m a cold-water kind of whale.” And tigers and whales don’t write children’s books where tigers and whales seem cute when they reflect. Humans can imagine these different realities, looking back and forward, dreaming and visioning. It is a great thing about us.
Egoic thinking is great…until it’s not
The downside of this reflexive capacity, Bourgeault says, “is the tendency to experience one’s personal identity as separate — composed of distinct qualities, defined by what holds one apart from the whole.” We can basically live in “our own little world” (my mother used to say!), revolving around our own sun — ourselves.
As a result of being alone and trapped within the boundaries of our limited senses, we all have a separation anxiety streak running through us because we really need and want to be together, not separate. To feel secure, the ego needs a lot of reassurance from others. It can’t get enough praise, security, accomplishment, etc. to help it overcome that dreadful sense of being left out, or thrown out, or just generally failing to be a full self in community. You can see how quickly we have all been driven into sin by this innate anxiety. And you can see why Jesus calls us to see our true selves in God’s grace, to look at ravens and lilies flourishing, to stop worrying and “seek first for the kingdom of God” as the means of becoming free of what is depriving us of joy.
Field of Lilies – Tiffany Studios, c. 1910.
Meditative prayer is a way of discovering and nurturing the latent capacity to see and experience life beyond our ordinary awareness. We can all perceive and respond to “the Mercy” I talked about last week. Nurturing our spiritual awareness is the primary way to experience the “mystical hope” I talked about the week before, the hope which is near and not the outcome of all our striving.
The centering prayer Bourgeault teaches is “a basic, no-nonsense method of self-emptying — simply letting go of thoughts as they arise — to help practitioners break out of their compulsive attachment to thinking and entrust themselves to the deeper stillness of God.” [Here is Martin Laird’s take on it.] The essence of this kind of meditation is not keeping a perfectly clear mind. The essence is recognizing the moment when one is distracted and willingly turning back into the stillness of the Mercy, toward hope. The essence is turning toward the meeting place we have inside as an act of faith and honor; letting go of our own stuff and holding a space open for all God gives and all God is.
We need to get beyond self-awareness and its evil twin: self-centeredness
We have a “self” awareness that is beyond the egoic capacity that makes us human — we also have spiritual awareness. Meditation leads us out of ego-centered consciousness and into a space where we meet God.
You may know almost every other feeling you can have better than the feeling of communion with God! Even so, someone has said we can meet God without even trying by 1) having a near-death experience or by 2) falling deeply in love. I do not wish you the first short cut and I do wish for you the latter. But I wish for us most of all the careful cultivation of meditation, which is the everyday path to knowing and loving God. Meditation is the discipline that helps us “die daily” as Paul says he does, and helps us be one in love as he hopes we will be. The prayer of meditation puts a stick in the spokes of our outer awareness and leads us into the warmth and abundance of our inner awareness and into hope in the Mercy.
It is a hard world right now. Maybe you are pretty numb like a newscaster said she was after covering the damage Trump and Hegseth have done to Iran and to the future of the U.S. Or maybe you are afraid of more smoke from Canada and the extreme weather of our new climate. If it were not a hard world, we’d probably make it one. So it is time to pray.
Have you listened to Jesus saying this to you lately?
Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Basic to that easy yoke is the prayer of meditation. We keep turning to it in our anxiety and fatigue and it keeps turning us toward hope.
Try it again. We certainly fit into the first two lines, for the most part. Maybe his “easy yoke” is meditation where we experience his gentleness and self-giving heart. As a result of staying in that “yoke” maybe we do find rest for our souls. Sounds like Jesus would love to bring us into the hope he carries, even through his suffering, doesn’t it?
We took a road trip to Monticello. My grandson bought an oversized nickel as a memento. The preservationists who maintain Thomas Jefferson’s lifelong rehab project posted a sign on the way up the mount to remind us we were entering a “sacred” space. Jefferson’s star-studded, science-driven plantation is an altar for the religion of America.
The mansion overlooks Charlottesville. That’s the city lately famous for a torch parade, the white supremacist march on August 11, 2017. Hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and alt-right activists stormed through the University of Virginia campus. They chanted antisemitic and racist slogans as they marched around Jefferson’s statue. The spectacle served as a prelude to the violent “Unite the Right” rally the following day.
Jerry Falwell Jr Says Donald Trump Offered Him Education Secretary Job
Not long after we left Charlottesville, we approached Lynchburg, VA, home of Jerry Falwell Airport and Liberty University, where the Moral Majority was born in the 80’s — that movement mobilized millions of politicized Evangelicals to combat what it viewed as the moral decline of the United States, championing traditional family values and heavily influencing postmodern American politics. (Falwell Jr., above, played the champion when dad died, but missed the morality). On the way there, I shouted as we turned a corner, “Look at that Confederate flag!” It was huge. Someone bought a gigantic flagpole and some company made an enormous flag to threaten me. The Christian radio station nearby had just aired a serious news story featuring Mike Johnson saying the Congress needed to pass the SAVE Act and he intended to attach it to a budget reconciliation bill soon.
The Thomas Jefferson impersonator at the Monticello Theater, had pointed out that in 1824 only 6% of the population was eligible to vote (white male landowners) and only 3% voted. Trump is now trying to get voting back to white people, at least. I think he can find many supporters in western Virginia.
Then WWE chairman Vince McMahon has his head shaved by Donald Trump and Bobby Lashley after losing a bet in the Battle of the Billionaires at the 2007 WrestleMania in Detroit, Michigan.
Monticello took some Kayfabe
Yes, traveling makes you think. I started connecting dots, like Jefferson and UFC.
Trump’s birthday fight on the White House lawn was a lesson in performative domination with the goal of ginning up support for his white-centered dictatorship [see Stephen Miller last week]. I learned a new word when I was wondering what he was trying to do by tearing up the White House grounds for a mixed martial arts arena. A.I. took the spectacle seriously, and even called it “historic” when I looked it up:
UFC Freedom 250, a historic mixed martial arts event held on the South Lawn of the White House on June 14, 2026. The unprecedented spectacle celebrated both the United States’ 250th anniversary and President Donald Trump’s birthday, and drew national headlines as a major, high-stakes sporting event.
A.I. sounds like a publicist for UFC. The Ultimate Fighting Championship is an American MMA promotion company based in the Las Vegas metro. It is owned and operated by TKO Group Holdings, a “premium sports” and entertainment company formed in 2023 by the merger of the UFC and WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). WWE is a majority-owned subsidiary of The WME Group (William Morris Endeavor), the world’s longest-running talent agency. Ponder that.
Swallowing Jefferson’s Frenchified Monticello as a sacred space, was a bit like rolling over for what WWE/Trump does, and maybe it’s like what most Evangelical church members are doing most of the time. They all take some “kayfabe.” [Check out this scholarly article].
Kayfabe is the tacit agreement/code professional wrestlers keep as they present staged matches, scripted rivalries, and predetermined characters as completely genuine even though they are fake. The term originating as secret carny slang to keep audiences in the dark, as in “Keep the kayfabe.” Postmodern kayfabe is used to maintain emotional immersion in the fiction rather than strict deception. Maybe you know all about this.
Like I noted, in the era of social media, kayfabe has evolved. Rather than attempting to fool the audience, postmodern kayfabe functions as a type of psychological storytelling where fans are in on the secret but willingly suspend their disbelief to enjoy the narrative. The term has also bled into mainstream culture, often used to describe performative political theater or calculated, winking online behavior.
At Monticello we were asked to play our part in the same story Jefferson enacting when he lived there. He is the Declaration of Independence writer who owns slaves. We overlook the slaves, even though we know they exist, in order to keep his shrine in Washington D.C. making sense. He is the UVA founder where a white supremacist mob rolled over people protesting the domination he enjoyed and employed. We overlook how he managed the white supremacist Constitution so he always looks enlightened.
Jefferson was not as expert or as self-conscious as Trump and his followers are when it came to kayfabe, of course. I never knew how much Trump was practicing it until I wondered about that bizarre UFC fight. I may be the last person in the country who finds such a thing odd.
It is not just politics, it is the church
The term has increasingly crossed over into mainstream culture. In everyday contexts, “kayfabe” is used to describe a tacit agreement to pretend that something is real, sincere, or competitive when it is actually performative—often used to describe political theater, marketing, or corporate posturing
Trump’s first election was straight out of the pro wrestling playbook. Voters knew it was fake, but they loved it. [See this article from The Guardian]. They knew he was playing a character (he kept talking about himself in the 3rd person!) and they knew who they were in the story. Here is a representative fan homage:
WWE is a hybrid form of sport, street fight, ballet, spectacle, and soap opera that defies easy categorization. Trump is in the WWE Hall of Fame. His WWE pedigree influenced his political campaigning style. It developed his boisterous, over-the-top character. The way he argues, insults and makes crass remarks all make perfect sense in the context of Trump the WWE entertainer. Trump’s pro-wrestling role is a celebrity who is a “no bullshit” straight talker who gets things done better than anyone else
Naomi Klein (2017) claimed that pro-wrestling is “invisible as a cultural force to most liberal voters.” I am one of them. My ignorance might go back to my father, who would not allow pro wrestling from KTLA, Channel 5, on his TV because it was all fake — which we doubted. We could, however, watch roller derby because we all knew that was staged. Now I am supposed to play along and help enact simulated emotions to produce alternative realities as if life were WWE. It’s a leap.
I can’t really do kayfabe. It is intrinsically unChristian, of course, but I also didn’t encounter it early enough, I think. I didn’t even play Dungeons and Dragons(D&D). Kayfabe now describes a form of audience engagement that involves, in the first instance, a willing suspension of disbelief within which performers, promoters and the audience, ALL “keep kayfabe.” For the latter, keeping kayfabe involves the active choice to participate in “performance conventions” such as cheering the “face” and booing the “heel.” In doing so, fans do not simply pretend to be fooled by the “game;” rather, in the new kayfabe, everyone is invested and involved in the playing of the game itself — Magic: The Gathering(MTG) with flying folding chairs, perhaps.
To refer to the “real” of wrestling today is to refer to backstage politics, writers’ rooms, booking decisions, and corporate judgments about who has star potential, who is popular in the locker room, or who is unpopular with management. It is a kind of real that, strangely, even contradictorily, embraces the fake. When it leaks into everyday life, newscasters always talk about the strategies of politicians and who is winning the latest contest rather than informing the listeners about the substance and consequences of what is going on.
Politics and church have largely followed suit
To enjoy WWE, fans must not only be aware of the inner workings of the business (the off-camera, backstage processes) but also able to construct hypotheses about them when they lack knowledge. The whole thing has become an active, collaborative relationship, a co-production in which fans both create and sustain kayfabe while simultaneously dissecting it, parsing the elements that construct the performance with a discerning eye on how well performers “follow the rules of the performance practice and play their role” and “read through the fiction to glean hidden truths.” If this sounds to you like conspiracy theories being monetized, you might be right.
Part of the fan’s participation becomes “a game of prediction and interpretation to which they apply their understanding of wrestling techniques, character histories, performers and WWE as a company.” For instance: Why did the bookers decide upon that outcome? Does the fact that the wrestler is “selling” the leg (acting as if it is injured) mean the match “finish” will involve that limb? Did an aggressive “promo” signal a “heel turn” by a “face?” It seems like anything can be “gamified” these days to increase fan devotion and profit.
So it was not surprising that at his post-2016-election thank-you rallies, Trump was able to level with his voters about the manipulative nature of his campaign tactics. When he referred to the redundant “Lock her up!” chants at his events, Trump now laughed with his supporters, telling them, “You people were vicious, violent, screaming, ‘Where’s the wall? We want the wall!’ Screaming ‘Prison! Prison! Lock her up!’ I mean you are going crazy!” The chants, he told them, contemplatively, “plays great before the election. Now we don’t care.” Far from his revelations undermining their enthusiasm for his Presidency, Trump’s supporters laughed along – after all, only marks truly believed all that stuff even if, while self-conceived smarts, they too chanted along.
That last point is the key to understanding Trump’s appeal. The country (and the church) may be more WWE, UFC, gamified, prediction addicted, and back-room cynical than you think. Politics happens like pro-wrestling — the chance that Mitch McConnell is actually dead is more interesting than his actions as a Senator or the future of the democracy. In WWE the smarts differentiate themselves from the imagined marks (the people who actually believe WWE is a contest). Nevertheless, the “smarts” retain the “overt knowledge that the core wrestling narrative relies, to a significant degree, on their successful performance as dupes not in on the con” – that is, the capacity to suspend disbelief is predicated upon the collected audience playing the part of a “true believer” sports spectator. To retain its “dramatic appeal” pro-wrestling requires smarts to perform as marks when attending events. Just like Marco Rubio (and Lindsay Graham, RIP) act like they are taking Trump seriously, a successful WWE event or Trump rally requires its attendees cheer and chant, performing their role as supporters-who-believe in their own exposition of smart fandom.
The evangelical church has always been a step away from such carnival, since the carnival works better than actual faith to draw a crowd and fill the plates. One of the reasons it is hard to make a Christian in the U.S. is the thin line between willingness to disbelieve and actual faith. The atmosphere is filled with Christians who picked up Trump just like they picked up Jesus. They were in it for the feels and vicarious sense of power, not the truth.
When Kelly Conway blithely talked about alternative facts, it was exposing kayfabe. When Paula White compares Trumps “sufferings” to that of Jesus, it is performing kafaybe. She actually stated, “No one has paid the price like you have,” likening his experiences to being “betrayed, and arrested, and falsely accused.” Furthermore, she has publicly declared that “to say no to President Trump would be saying no to God”
People on my feed shake their heads and say “Trump lives in his own world.” True. When he talks about Trump in the third person, he is talking about his persona, his WWE Hall of Fame persona. What he does as the real Trump may be lost on him at this point, I don’t know. But “his own world” is shared by millions who live in “their own world” with him. They are perfecting the unreality which accompanies the world we all share.
As we came home over the Walt Whitman Bridge, we snapped a picture of our smoke-dimmed home town. Canadian fires are climate-change induced — some facts are difficult to undermine. As the smoke started rolling in last week, the president got on TV to repeat his lie about the 2020 election. He said that China had meddled because it obtained voter registration info that anyone with enough money can purchase legally. He did not hit anyone over the head with a chair, which probably would have garnered even more attention, but he did implicitly call on us to “keep the kayfabe” with him as the world burned.
The super-analog Proverbs in the Bible includes this one: Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment (12:19).
I had a spiritual director once who was trained in the “Ignation School” of spirituality. Our relationship was a nice experience for me. He was a chemist, by education, and brought much of the personality and expertise of his field with him into our relationship. Being almost the opposite of a chemist, in training and typical personality type, I benefited greatly.
At one point, he told me about the three ways I could be tempted, according to Ignatius, and asked me to decide which way I was being tempted in the moment. You, like I am, may be tempted to give up your true self, or conform to the present ways of the world because of fear, or just try to ignore Jesus or all your spiritual awareness because there is just a lot of nonsense piling up all around us it is overwhelming
I hope repeating this old post might give you a couple of minutes of clarity or inspiration, depending on how you’re wired.
I have never forgotten the imagery Ignatius offered his disciples. Here are the thoughts from the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola paraphrased by David Fleming. I thought you might like to examine yourself to see how you are likely to be opposed this week.
According to Ignatius three are ThreeWays the Enemy Works:
Like a Bully
The enemy behaves like a bully who is a weakling before strength, but a tyrant before weakness. It would be characteristic of a bully to lose courage and take flight when confronted with someone who is determined and strong of will. However, if a person loses courage and begins to flee, the anger, vindictiveness, and rage of the bully will surge up and know no bounds. In the same way the enemy becomes weak, loses courage, and turns to flight as soon as the one leading a spiritual life faces their temptations boldly. (SE 325)
I have been very encouraged this week by dear friends who have had the courage to face “the bully” in whatever guise he was taking. Minnesotans may down in history for teaching us. My friends make me remember the recurring dream I had for several weeks, long ago now, in which a “monster” was chasing me. Gwen suggested I prepare to turn and face it that night rather than dreading to run away from it in my dreams. I decided to do it, and in my dream I did it. The result was exactly as Ignatius said. I proved it had no power over me.
Like a False Lover
The Enemy’s behavior can also be compared to that of a false lover. One who loves falsely uses another for selfish gains, and so people become objects at one’s disposal or like playthings for entertainment or good times. A false lover usually suggests that the so-called intimacy of relationship be kept secret because of fear that such duplicity will be made known. So does the Enemy often act in ways to keep temptations secret, and our tactics must be to bring our temptations out into the light of day to someone like our director, confessor or some other spiritual companion. (SE 326)
I regularly hear about the literal “false lovers” who lock people up. Porn is the undiscussed false lover for any people. Many people have connected with a person who doesn’t love Jesus and that relationship is a secret love. Some people have many secrets about how they have satisfied their lust and pretended they didn’t to their intimates. Sex it a spiritual matter. Although many people are resolute in pretending otherwise, there are probably no inconsequential couplings or orgasms. There are good reasons to wonder how people got into the Epstein files.
But our loves are not all sexual. We have many lovers who use us and leave us kicked to the curb. We trust our employers or addictions or abusers, even when they don’t love us like Jesus. We trust our false selves in all their delusions and bad heart-habits, even when they have repeatedly been proven self-destructive.
The solution is dialogue. We shouldn’t wait for our expectations of trustworthiness to be fully satisfied before we talk about our lovers. They are much less powerful in the light. Just because they fear the light, and they tell us that being secret is better, and they warn us of the terrible consequences of living in the light, that doesn’t mean they aren’t lying.
Like a Shrewd Army Commander
The Enemy can also work like a shrewd army commander who carefully maps out the tactics of the attack at the weakest point of defense. The military leader knows the weakness is found in two ways: a) the weakness of fragility and unpreparedness, and b) the weakness of complacent strength which is self-sufficient pride.
The Enemy attacks come against us at both points of weakness. The first kind of weakness is less serious in that we more readily acknowledge our need and cry or for help from God. The second kind of weakness is far more serious and more devastating in its effect upon us so that it can be a more favored tactic of the Enemy. (SE 327)
Peter says the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. This is a similarly threatening image. Our enemy is like an army commander scoping out the weak defenses of our walled city. Some places, like the gates we open to the world every day are well-defended because we know about them. But there are weak sections of the wall, perhaps, that defend places we never expect to be attacked, or don’t want to imagine being attacked because we’ve been hurt there before, that are much more dangerous.
The sociopaths who have taken over the presidency and many corporations are shrewd in that the are single-minded in their pursuit of winning power. ICE is literally prowling. It is overwhelming. Jesus knows. John said, “ Greater is the one in you than the one in the world. Relying on our own strength is probably the weakest thing we could do.
Opposition is real
Our former church got complacent and distracted. I think they thought we were safe because everyone supposedly loved one another. It made many people “sitting ducks” in the gun sites of an enemy shooting conflict at us. We can be so committed to our harmony that we don’t allow healthy conflict, or don’t even allow needed change to occur if it might create conflict. We even had a proverb that said, “Everyone is recovering from the sin addiction – expect conflict.”
On a more personal level, each of us might be very unaware of our childhood defense mechanisms and just consider them “normal,” or even “my right to be who I am,” or even, nowadays, “my genetic disposition that I can’t change even if I want to.” We could all use a little more Ignatian attention to our wanton self-sufficiency. The enemy would love us to be self-sufficient. It is antithetical to serving God. It makes easy to dominate, since we are basically alone looking for power when, just as Bad Bunny said, “The only thing greater than hate is love.”
Ignatian spirituality is not for the weakly committed. It takes a lot of time to ponder all the ways we could be growing stronger in faith and becoming stronger opponents to the enemies of God. I am encouraged to take the time, because much of the time I am not spending becoming aware of my temptations I am spending conforming to them.
Jesus was born again in the year 2025,
in the reign of King Donald, who
commandeered the airwaves to recite
his pack of lies once again and again,
vainly propping up his house of cards.
No one watched.
The prophets echoed like memories of angels:
When tyrants tremble in their fear
And hear their death knell ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near
How can I keep from singing?
In prison cell and dungeon vile
Our thoughts to them are winging,
When friends by shame are undefiled
How can I keep from singing?
Jesus was born again in the year 2025,
a time when the jester, Pete Hegseth,
sent drones to kill the unsuspecting,
smugglers and fishermen on the open sea,
like Herod searching Bethlehem.
No drugs were found.
The prophets echoed like magi in the night:
Herod the king, in his raging
Chargèd he hath this day
His men of might in his own sight
All young children to slay
That woe is me, poor child, for thee
And ever mourn and may
For thy parting neither say nor sing
“Bye bye, lully, lullay.”
Robert Croo (ed.) in 1534 from 1456 (War of the Roses)
Jesus was born again in the year 2025
when Old King Donald faked emergencies
and Congress sat on their wall, never
to stop him “Stop Him!” and his illegal tariffs,
and his slicing the world into spheres.
His mania spiked.
The prophets echoed like shepherds telling the news:
Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king
Do you know what I know?
In your palace warm, mighty king
Do you know what I know?
A Child, a Child shivers in the cold
Let us bring him silver and gold
Said the king to the people everywhere
Listen to what I say!
Pray for peace, people, everywhere
Listen to what I say!
The Child, the Child sleeping in the night
He will bring us goodness and light
Gloria Shayne Baker in 1962 (Cuban Missile Crisis)
Jesus was born again in the year 2025
When King Donald and his minions
vainly tried to stop the tale of Epstein
from being told across the land.
He protected pedophiles.
He pardoned felons.
He profited billionaires,
and called it hope for the poor.
No one believed him.
The prophets echoed like John the Baptist preparing the way:
Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother,
and in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
let all within us praise His holy name.
Christ is the Lord! O praise His name forever!
His pow’r and glory evermore proclaim!
Placide Cappeau in 1847 (2nd French Revolution)
Jesus was born again in the year 2025
when King Donald begged for a peace prize
and an arch to validate his vapid life,
and placed his name on someone else’s memorial
prophetically putting himself
in the grave.
The prophets echoed like a memory of Mary’s great song,
like the worms that ate Herod cried out for lack of enough voices:
But with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring; –
Oh hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing!
Edmund Sears in 1849 (Fugitive Slave Act)
Henry Ossawa Tanner, Angels Appearing before the Shepherds, c. 1910
Jesus was born again in the year 2025:
born in us who hear the angels sing,
born in us worn down with woe,
born in us subject to sociopaths,
born in us bound by bloated oligarchs,
born in us who amplify your voice,
louder every day, as the dawn rises
and the Son shines through the veil,
the Light of our restoration.
The prophets cry out with the prophets of old
and with all who relay the music of your sphere:
The original final verses:
VII
Come, Desire of Nations, come,
Fix in Us thy humble Home,
Rise, the Woman’s Conqu’ring Seed,
Bruise in Us the Serpent’s Head,
VIII
Now display the saving Pow’r,
Ruin’d Nature now restore,
Now in Mystic Union join
Thine to Ours, and Ours to Thine.
IX Adam’s Likeness, Lord, efface,
Stamp thy Image in its Place,
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in Thy Love.
X
Let us Thee, tho’ lost, regain,
Thee, the Life, the Inner Man:
O! to All Thyself impart,
Form’d in each Believing Heart.
Charles Wesley in 1739 (War of Austrian Succession)
Peter Thiel and Elon Musk — key bros in the “PayPal Mafia” who went on to lucrative projects after PayPal was acquired by eBay in 2002, have now gone on to government-breaking so they can perfect their power-grabbing. Thank God people are talking about Palantir all the time!
The unexpected consequences of the bros’ brazen tech-authoritarianism is an outbreak of creativity on the part of the resistance. For instance, Governor Newsome’s Trumpesque Tweets are a hilarious and creative way of asserting California’s right to exist without thugs in their faces (as they experienced when Newsome spoke about redistricting the other day). Old ladies fomenting “Be Brave Day” last Friday is anther version of resistance; they were saying “No! We exist.” The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church titled his Fourth of July message: “Once the church of presidents, The Episcopal Church must now be an engine of resistance.” That’s unexpected!
There are a lot of smart, energetic people out there creatively resisting! They are not shutting up (even though you can get fired for saying the wrong thing — like my friend was fired from her job last month for being outspoken about starving Gazans). For instance, two months ago Tad Stoermer decided to speak up and made this video about the difference between protest and resistance. It finally caught up with me as it wound its way through the algorithm. He insists the present broken time is not calling for reform but for creative transformation.
Existence is resistance
Back in 2011, “existence is resistance” became my new favorite phrase. I learned it from Palestinians, like those from Stop the Wall, and from the Christian Peacemaker Teams in At-Tuwani, south of Hebron. They were creatively resisting. They certainly did not expect Israel to reform (and it did not!); their only hope was transformation. And that begins with their insistent existence. Their continual “No!”
In At-Tuwani, our MCC Learning Tour delegation met a woman from Switzerland who had been living in the village for six years as part of CPT’s work of support. That’s committed resistance. She was about ready to return to Europe, since the villagers were organized enough to do without the protection of witnesses from the U.S. or Europe.
At-Tuwani was in “Area C” of the apartheid system Israel was perfecting in its occupied territories. That means the village was under direct military control. Living in Area C meant that almost anything could happen to a Palestinian for “security” reasons (some say the U.S. is following the Israeli model now). It meant one’s rights were adjudicated by military justice. Practically, it meant one’s land was subject to seizure and the housing developments being planted on your grazing and farm land could supplant your long-held practices – and would be protected by the military (which, by the way, is still protected by the United States). The village was something of a showcase for people devoted to nonviolent resistance. They have been dedicated to the proposition that existence is resistance (and they are still hanging in there).
at-Tuwani 2011
We listened to one of the village’s activists talk about the awakening that caused him to be a leader in direct nonviolent action. When the nearby Israeli settlement was built, it disrupted all the village’s ways. The “settlers” commandeered farmland and claimed grazing areas for their use. One day they beat the man’s mother when she dared to graze sheep in land they were trying to control. As we looked over the village he described how he had participated in securing its ongoing existence against the constant pressure and harassment of the Israeli settlers, military and bureaucracy. Their existence is resistance.
Slaves of Christ
It seems like the Church is usually in need of a refresher course on being an engine of resistance. It is usually the oppressed of the world who can provide the seminar.
In 2017 our old church did some refreshing theology. As I look back on our work from the era of Trump 2.0, I like our thinking even more. Our work came to some truth about our calling to resist antichrist powers — which the Church had been downplaying right down to the way it translated the Bible!
We were concentrating on Paul’s “two-tiered” theology applied to our “social action.” You can see my treatment here in this article.
One of the places where we could see Paul’s thinking was when he related to slaves. In our day, when people are into the idolatry Trump preaches, in which young people are chained to their survival jobs and debt, when white supremacists are trying to re-enslave African Americans, and in which we are all tempted to bow in fear before the Tweeter-in-chief, we may need to think about freeing the slaves more consciously than ever.
Be small
First, if we want to get anything out of Paul’s thoughts on slavery, we have to remember that when he speaks to women, Gentiles and slaves seriously as members of the church, his respect is subversive. Some of us forget, as we turn our “imperial gaze” on the “others” who are so-called “minorities” and so marginalized, that Paul is writing as one of those “others.” He and his little groups of persecuted misfits who are beginning to infect the Roman Empire are not speaking from a position of privilege and power. His view is small; he has become small; the people in his church plants are the “others” in their towns and villages. So he writes from “under” not “over.”
One of the first tasks in understanding him is to let go of any imperial outlook, the supposed privileges of being an American citizen, the protection of the huge military apparatus, even the exceptionalism of being a better Christian than others, and become small enough to need a Savior, to act as a slave of Christ.
Bible translators during the Reformation. And subsequently, undermined our understanding when they decided that rendering the common Greek word for “slave” as slave was too demeaning, so they tidied things up by using the word servant, instead (which is a big difference). Philippians 2:7 in the KJV is a good example. There Paul describes Jesus as taking on the condition of a slave. But the KJV calls him a servant. I think Paul meant what he wrote. It is much more realistic, to see how humankind oppresses Jesus than to see Jesus as serving up salvation to us as we decide whether we want it or not. In order to hear what Paul, the slave of Jesus, is teaching, we’ll have to get into his slavish shoes.
Practice slaving
Once in Paul’s shoes, we can see what he is talking about. His thoughts are a lot bigger than whether a person is going to gain social or political freedom. That achievement would be frosting on his hope cake. The cake is being freed from the need to be freed from what humans do to you and being a grateful slave to the salvation that Jesus is working into us. Here’s just one example of how he thinks:
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving” – Colossians 3:23-4.
That last clause could better read: “It is for the Lord (master) Christ you are slaving.” That is his first-tier thinking. He knows a truth, the Truth, the world does not know and he is living in it, no matter who he is in the eyes of the world or according to its ways.
Everyone who is thoroughly trained in democratic equality and the centrality of human choice (the general God-free zone of Western thought these days) is likely to think those lines are heresy; it might even feel icky to read them, taboo. Slaving?! Paul has none of those qualms. He finds it an honor to be a slave in Christ’s house as opposed to being a ruler in a house of lies. God is a “master” beyond anything Hobbes, Rousseau or Ayn Rand could imagine. You can see that he is not interested in reformation, he’s experiencing transformation.
So when Paul goes on to talk to slaves, getting into the matters of their everyday lives, as they are locked in their situation with masters, benign or despotic, he has a variety of options for them. His first tier thinking makes them completely free to do the best they can with what they’ve got in the day-to-day, passing-away, fallen world. So he says to his brothers and sisters in Colossae:
“Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord…. Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for their wrongs, and there is no favoritism.” — Colossians 3:22, 25
Note that Paul is likely writing his letter to Colossae from house arrest in Rome. His slavery to Jesus has resulted in becoming enslaved by the Romans. So he can write from personal understanding. Basically, being a good slave who resists the master by obeying out of love and freedom instead of fear is good Christianity. It is possible to exude “no” when you are doing a submissive “yes” according to Jesus. Elsewhere, of course, Paul advises slaves to get free if they can. And he tells Philemon to treat his runaway slave as a brother, or just charge him whatever it costs to set him free.
There are no disempowered people in Christ, even our suffering has the power of grace and love in it. A slave in the world is God’s free person. A free person in the world is God’s slave. This is hard to translate for people who believe the delusion that law makes them free and rational rules and education will prevent suffering. Paul might respond to such ideas, as he did, and say, “Though I am blameless before the law, I am God’s prisoner, a lifelong felon freed by grace.” Similarly, no Jesus followers merely work for human masters, we do whatever we do with the Lord. Even when oppressed, we experience the hope that we will have our reward and the oppressors will get theirs.
How do we take action?
So what do we do in the face of the oppressive masters beating down on us and the world? Pray harder, safe in our salvation? Absolutely. But that is not all. You’re probably taking action in many creative ways.
Our old church summarized what we do in our statement of our mission and put it on a t-shirt:
Loving the thirsty people of our fractured region,
we keep generating a new expression of the church
to resist and restore with those moved by the Holy Spirit.
We resist. I am Christ’s slave. That is a defiant statement of resistance. My existence is resistance. I will never be a slave to a human, no matter what one does to me: buy me, imprison me, or take away my livelihood. I will always belong to the Lord, forever. And, as he demonstrates, in a very real sense, Jesus will always belong to me, forever. He has made Himself our slave.
We restore. I am an obedient slave. My work is well-ordered. Jesus is the Lord of all and we are making that known and effective, day by day. We restore by reorienting people’s identities to align with their salvation. We restore by relentlessly loving in the face of hate and indifference. We restore by telling the truth in the face of lies. We restore by sharing our resources and making peace. And, I think most important, we restore by practicing the kind of mutuality that creates an alternative community that is not allied with the powers that dig up the world and destroy connections between God and people like hurricanes blasting through our village.
Our existence is the foundation of our resistance. We can only hope that the country will be put to right soon. But even if it isn’t, we know who we are and what to do. Being knit together in the love of Jesus is more important than ever, isn’t it! Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are intent on taking over the world and believe they deserve to! What else would we do but resist?
The election has apparently boiled down to a discussion about the economy (which that doddering old fool, Joe Biden, led into the post-pandemic envy of the world), and the border (which is challenged but apparently better off under the present administration,
Click for SPLC bio of Trump propogandist Stephen Miller
even though Trump torpedoed the rare bi-partisan solution the Senate hammered out). Meanwhile, the existential threat to the whole world, climate change, is not even on the radar. How are our leaders not talking about the biggest issue we face and why are we allowing them to get away with it? We have our reasons.
The false prophets who rule the world, right now, or threaten to do so, could kill us all. So why do they do it, and why do so many of us keep listening to their lies? We seem to have very little capacity to see the wolves under all that sheepskin (Matt 7:15).
Controlling the airwaves
As Donald Trump has proven over and over, liars become powerful when they control the narrative. Back in the day, when our church was training an expanding pool of cell leaders, one of the hardest lessons to learn was what to do when a person dominates the evening’s conversation. A fledgling leader could easily let a needy or naughty person lead the group down an annoying or unhelpful path just because they could not figure out how to make them share the airwaves. The loudest person in a small group is often the de facto leader. Trump lies loudly. He knows that even when he gets attention for being bad, he is controlling the news cycle.
But why do so many people end up believing his loud lies, or forgive them, even after they are told the Haitians are not eating pets in Springfield Ohio?
Since Donald Trump’s successful playbook started surprising people in 2015, psychologists have been writing about why wannabe autocrats do what they do and why so many people commit to them.
We can see why Trump does it, he wants power. But why do people buy the big lie? There are reasons. Let’s not call them “good” reasons, but we have reasons for preferring something other than truth. [Here’s one article about that I’m using today].
Four reasons people follow false prophets
See what you think about this explanation:
We believe “pre-facts.” We are generally preoccupied with what might happen (we spend a lot of time “what-iffing”). It is good habit for surviving. There may be no cars in sight, but we still teach our kids to look both ways because, “You never know.” So we believe a car might run us over. That’s a pre-fact. It hasn’t happened yet, but it is true. It could happen. When we believe something might happen, if someone says it is happening, even if it isn’t, we will likely believe them, or forgive them for lying. Fearsome immigrants in the heartland could be eating beloved pets — or they might, you never know.
As a result, we get on unethical bandwagons.If we believe someone’s lies will become true, we reserve the moral condemnation they deserve. In one study, participants who were primed to believe a lie was likely to become true were less likely to hold others accountable for spreading lies on social media and more likely to share disinformation themselves. The stronger the gist was felt to be true, the stronger was the prefactual effect.
We become committed to the gist despite the facts. When participants imagined prefactuals more vividly and believed there was a good chance of the facts changing, they were less likely to judge lies as unethical, because they experienced the gist of the statement as true, even if the facts weren’t quite right. ……It is astounding, isn’t it, how the Mosaic Law flies in the face of every nation’s fear of being overrun or polluted by strangers. Leviticus 19:34 says, “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as a native among you, and you shall love him as yourself” That never seems to go with the gist.
Our fears compel us to preserve a lie that fits with our bias.We like to think we are rational, but unconscious things motivate us all the time. If we are focused on the what ifs, negative or positive, we are motivated to “go with our gut” which is often a pre-factual “gist.” We all deny unwelcome truth and adjust the facts to conform to preferred outcomes. ……In Western cultures, especially, “motivated reasoning” is a mechanism people commonly use to preserve a favorable identity. To maintain positive self-regard, we (unwittingly) discount unflattering or troubling information that contradicts our self-image. It’s a way we avoid or lessen the distress we feel when we get information that makes us uncomfortable — instead of naming the wolf, we dress it in sheep’s clothing. It’s easier.
I can’t stop thinking that Donald Trump might win the election because enough of us prefer his delusional presence, which distracts us and confirms our own wishful delusions. We prefer going with his lies to dealing with the climate terror facing us and the painful changes every society needs to make to save the planet. After all, accepting that climate change is real portends unpleasant environmental consequences and would require most people to head them off by making significant changes in lifestyle. Changing one’s mind and changing one’s lifestyle is hard work; people prefer mental shortcuts—in this case, having the goal fit their ready-made conclusions.
Undermining climate action
Instead of having anything helpful to say about the recent hurricanes in the South, Trump kept himself in the news by suggesting FEMA was going to deprive Republican areas of aid. State officials, red and blue, immediately debunked the lie, but his narrative fit the gist many people live in – a pre-factual world where something is coming to get them, the government, Venezuelan rapists, or trans-loving Army colonels.
The most discomforting reality, however, is blowing in with the latest storm. In case you missed it, the increasingly powerful “El Nino” climate pattern has reduced the flow of the Amazon River in Colombia by about 90%. In Ecuador, which relies almost entirely on hydroelectric power, people are enduring energy cuts of up to 14 hours per day, knocking out the internet and sapping the country’s economy.
In Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, the government is cutting water to residential homes at regular intervals and the mayor has suggested that people “bathe as a couple” to reduce consumption.
A drought-stranded boat in the Solimoes River in Brazil, one of the largest tributaries of the Amazon River. Credit: Bruno Kelly/Reuters
Long sections of the Amazon River have turned into dry, brown beaches, and officials are dredging sections to make them deeper. In Brazil, wildfires fueled by searing heat and prolonged dry conditions have consumed vast swaths of forest, wetlands and pastures, with smoke spreading to 80% of the country. It has led to canceled classes, hospitalizations and a black dust coating the inside of homes. (NYTimes)
A drought covering large parts of the Amazon rainforest is especially worrying because it is the globe’s most important carbon sink, absorbing heat trapping gases.
Carlos Nobre spearheaded the multi-disciplinary, multinational Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia that revolutionized understanding of the Amazon rainforest and its role in Earth’s ecology.
Carlos Nobre, the climate scientist, says dryer conditions diminish the forest’s ability to take in those gases, worsening global warming. The less rain means less effective trees taking carbon out of the air. Then they burn, adding carbon to the air.
Nobre notes that the recent drought has crossed several unsettling milestones: never has so little rain fallen in the rainforest, never have dry conditions lasted so long, and never has such a vast region of the jungle been affected.
The drought comes amid another worrisome moment: In January, for the first time, the planet’s average temperature hit 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels for 12 consecutive months. Temperature levels beyond that would lead to consequences that would make it challenging for societies to cope, to say the least. Nobre confirms that many scientists and policymakers did not expect the globe to hit that mark for years. They are worried the earth’s warming is accelerating. “We are scared,” he said.
Keep your feet on the way of Jesus
People cherry pick the Mosaic law to find things that are ill-applied to postmodern culture. It is like a party game or it makes an amusing meme to pass around on social media. Meanwhile they ignore the revelations that contradict their pre-factuals. That’s why the law had to tell people, “Don’t kill or ostracize the stranger, treat them like God treated you when you were a refugee in Egypt.” And why Jesus, the fulfillment of the Law, says, “No, don’t just love people who love you. Love one another as I have loved you.” We strain out some gnat of preferred gist and swallow a camel of lies about reality. Save us, Lord.
Right now the false prophets are loudly leading us to ignore the most important truths about our life together on Earth. They help us occupy ourselves with fantasies which fit our warped views of ourselves. Even those of us who know this are flummoxed about what to do. We scroll screens to calm our anxiety and withdraw from difficult community-building right when we are most needed.
I have not managed to changed the U.S. political system – I’ve tried, but it got worse under my watch. I have reasons to give up. I could not even make significant change in the church – what we did was great for a season, but it got blown away. I have reasons to be cynical. But I still feel obligated to walk with Jesus, the way, the truth and the life and trust God, step by step, no matter what storm arises.
The liars are providing delusions. We’re set up to believe things that confirm our alternative facts about ourselves and preferred futures. The overwhelming info machine in our hands is not helping. Even so, many more of us need to invent and support radical climate action or there will be little future to enjoy. I think Jesus would like to help us with that.
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If you want to read more of what I’ve written on climate action, here’s the link.
What does one do with a “gotcha” question? Here is a lesson from Vice President Harris.
Dana Bash, after trying to get Harris to admit she flip flopped on fracking for no scientific reason after she became a national figure (and someone who needs to win Pennsylvania!), brought up Donald Trump’s remarks about whether or not she is really Black. Bash must have been asking about this because that is what every voter needs to hear from a potential candidate, right? “No!” you say? “It was because the CNN anchor, and her network, were hoping stoke a juicy pissing match to make some headlines?” You are probably right.
Unfortunately for Bash and CNN, the Vice President did not take the bait. Her entire response was: “Yeah. Same old tired playbook. Next question.” That’s one thing you could do with a “Gotcha.” Maybe sigh and say, “So boring!” or “So without grace, much less wisdom.”
Gotcha epidemic
Maybe we all need to rehearse our responses. I don’t know if this is happening where you live, but “gotcha” is like a cultural trait around here. Criticism appears to have become an obligation. And catching someone doing something wrong is a sport – even if one needs to make up the wrong out of whole cloth (meaning a patched up mess of scraps masquerading as whole cloth, which was quite expensive in the 16th century).
Trump’s unlawful invasion of the Afghanistan War veterans section of Arlington Cemetery was intended as a “gotcha.” They wanted to tag Kamala Harris with somehow ordering the evacuation during which thirteen soldiers were killed by a bomb — the same evacuation Trump caused by announcing a deadline Biden decided to approximate. Trump intended to show the world how little Harris cares for Afghan War veterans on the sacred day of observance his team concocted. It’s the same old tired playbook. But it happens every day.
I think it happens to most leaders everywhere these days. For instance, I told you I was elected to my condo board. I can’t decide if I was honored to be noticed or not, but one of the members of the loyal opposition to the board spread the rumor that I was illegit because I was delinquent in my payments. Gotcha! Our volunteer lawyer called me up in a tizzy, afraid my reputation was going down the drain. She assured me she informed them I was not delinquent. I think I disappointed her by not being too upset. I’ve been treated worse by people I loved more. And I was wondering if being deposed might just be a good idea.
Such indignities are so common news about them seems normal. For instance, an anonymous complaint was recently filed with the University of Washington where Robin DiAngelo submitted her 2004 dissertation, “Whiteness in Racial Dialogue: A Discourse Analysis.” She went on to write a hugely influential book based on it titled What Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Her book is true and was hugely successful. The internet says she might be worth $5 million now. Her writing and speaking contributed to institutional comeuppance all over the country.
The complaint accuses DiAngelo of “research misconduct,” and details 20 instances in which she appears to have drawn on the work of other scholars and reproduced it without proper attribution (I just cut and pasted that sentence from the NYTimes). A conservative newspaper got hold of the complaint and published it. At the University such complaints are confidential — but no more. Before there can be a rational or relational process, there is Gotcha! “Similar complaints have been filed against diversity officers at Harvard, Columbia, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison” (NYT – don’t want more complaints).
Tim Walz’ approach
At the CNN 20-minute-spread-over-45-minutes interview, Tim Walz was apparently there for eye candy. He wasn’t asked too many questions. But, of course, he was asked why he said he carried a gun in war since he was never in combat. He could have said “The U.S. has been at war since I was born and I served in the National Guard for 24 years.” He did not say that in the interview. Bash asked him, “A campaign official said you misspoke. Did you?” I’m not sure why he did not say he misspoke, exaggerated or whatever he was doing. So what? I’m sure he knew people knew he had never been on the front line or directing drones from Nevada. But make sure you don’t make any mistakes in what you say!
His reply was a pretty good example of what to do with a gotcha, however. He said,
It is OK to talk back to deceivers or just mean people trying to make you look bad — the same people who are making all of us afraid to say anything. I heard from two clients last week who did not want to keep a journal because they actually feared someone would find it and publish it. Even private thoughts are subject to investigation! Gotcha has an impact on our psychological and spiritual development! So like Gov. Walz, we should talk back — especially if the fear has been installed in you.
Our condo building is full of gotcha, like I said. We have a lot of wonderful people, many Jesus-loving people. But even they get caught up in the zeitgeist of thinking some conspiracy is afoot and we’d better uncover it. (Hmmm. Could the nightly stories of about on all those crime dramas have anything to do with that? I was so glad when Marcella was finally over! [Exhaustive recap]. But the reruns of White Collar were still on the list [Matt Bomer shilling]). I get so many indignant emails I started deleting some senders automatically.
That’s sad, isn’t it? Everyone needs community. No one should be summarily deleted. Condo associations are some of the last associations we have left! We need to associate or we get sick. The gotcha era seems to be an hysterical reaction to being so alone and afraid. If someone is out to get us, a lot of us will get them first. If everyone is out to get us, then everyone needs to be got.
John McWhorter’s suggestion
What came to John McWhorter’s mind as he watched Harris find her way through the gauntlet of skepticism, criticism and lying that surrounds everyone in even mildly public life, was not joy, no matter what Oprah said. It was the cautionary tale he learned from being swept up in the adulation of the first black president. He does not think people were crying at the DNC because Harris is a seismic shift towards a renewed era of democracy. He thinks they love her because her Blackness symbolizes something. He says:
It’s time, then, to evaluate Harris according to — you knew this was coming — the content of her character. When I urged that about Obama in 2008, some people took offense. They didn’t like being told that they were objectifying him. They said I was underestimating Obama’s record of achievement. I eventually fell in with the idea that his Blackness was cool and important. I know better now, and I hope we all do.
I wish Harris well, partly because I sincerely believe that my tween daughter — and possibly our guinea pig — would be a better president than the megalomaniacal, incurious, unqualified lout who is the alternative.
But just as it diminishes Harris to cherish her primarily because she is not Trump, it diminishes her to cherish her primarily because of her skin color and a vague sense of what it signifies. We truly honor Harris in fashioning the mental exercise — and it is an effortful one, I know — of assessing her as an individual.
That is another way to deal with the gotcha. Accept yourself and be content with who you are. And let others be who they are. Have the courage to be who you are, tell the truth, and let the chips fall where they may [American woodchopping idiom]. Keep your eyes on the main thing. McWhorter says he is an atheist, but he also says his views were influenced by the Quaker schools he attended here in Philadelphia. He sounds a bit like the Apostle Paul, when he encourages us to see character not superficialities.
So let’s let Paul have the last word. He goes way beyond asking us to avoid seeing people according to the normal superficialities, shame and fear which divide us. He claims Jesus has made us all the same in his death and all unique in his new creation. Not even a “Gotcha!” can do anything about that!
For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for the one who for their sake died and was raised.
From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we no longer know him in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being! — 2 Corinthians 5:14-17
I guess this is what married Christians do in 2024. My wife came to me after her prayers and wanted to talk. “What should we be doing about this year?” she asked. A sobering question.
We’ve often wondered what we would have done if the Nazis rolled train-fulls of Jews and other targeted people through our town. Would we lay across the tracks? Is this the year we will find out?
US President Joe Biden delivers his third State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, USA, 07 March 2024. SHAWN THEW/Pool via REUTERS
At the State of the Union address last Thursday a feisty Joe Biden tried to rally the dispirited and exhausted electorate with a long list of accomplishments and plans. He sounded upbeat and defiant and his congressional boosters were enthusiastic. But his ambitious speech was a picture painted on a backdrop of half of Congress sitting on their hands — looking a lot like the Speaker in the photo, above.
Biden jumped right into his call to action and returned to it at the end:
My message to President Putin, who I have known for a long time, is simple: We will not walk away. We will not bow down. I will not bow down.
In a literal sense, history is watching. History is watching. Just like history watched three years ago on Jan. 6, when insurrectionists stormed this very Capitol and placed a dagger to the throat of American democracy.
Many of you were here on that darkest of days. We all saw with our own eyes. The insurrectionists were not patriots. They had come to stop the peaceful transfer of power, to overturn the will of the people.
Jan. 6 lies about the 2020 election, and the plots to steal the election, posed a great, gravest threat to U.S. democracy since the Civil War. [Skipping to the end]
My fellow Americans, the issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are, it’s how old are our ideas.
Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are the oldest of ideas. But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back.
To lead America, the land of possibilities, you need a vision for the future and what can and should be done. Tonight you’ve heard mine.
It was the best speech I ever heard him make. But I think he gave an even better message as the cameras followed him around the chamber when he was done. He graciously and cheerfully attended to a roomfull of egotists and looked like a regular guy doing it. He looked like a caring adult. He has a daunting task: negotiating with a Netanyahu, speaking to a Representative in a Trump T-shirt (left), spotting George Santos in a crystal-encrusted collar and seeing poor Senator Lankford who thought he had a compromise border bill before Trump pulled the plug to deny Biden a “win.” But there he was connecting and, dare I say, sincerely caring.
Politics will not save us. We know that very well — Christians always have always known that. As a result, Jesus followers have endured every imaginable hostile environment throughout history in almost every culture. Jesus is alive and well in China right now. Putin and Orban will not co-opt all the true believers in their countries. Christians have survived in Palestine since Jesus rose from the dead.
But what should Jesus-loving, compassionate, justice-seeking people do in this very political year — a year when the stakes seem so high? I don’t think we should just wait for the trains to leave the city limits and hope the consequences aren’t too bad. Especially in the U.S., where Christianity has a history of saving capitalists and power-hungry extremists from their worst impact for generations, we really ought to be salt and light; we really should have better solutions than to join a political party or just drop out. Lives and livelihoods are at stake! Planetary war and warming are both constant threats! Children are malnourished, going uneducated, and dying. Wouldn’t Jesus be on the side of the least of these?
Here is what we are up against.
Since 2021 Republicans have blocked the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act. Last September, House Democrats reintroduced it. On March 1 it was introduced to the Senate.
Speaking in Selma on the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday on March 1, Kamala Harris shared that the first thing she sees when she enters her office. It is a
“large framed photograph taken on Bloody Sunday depicting an injured Amelia Boynton receiving care at the foot of [the Edmund Pettus] bridge…[F]or me, “it is a daily reminder of the struggle, of the sacrifice, and of how much we owe to those who gave so much before us….History is a relay race. Generations before us carried the baton. And now, they have passed it to us.”
Meanwhile in Mar-a-Lago after his near-clinching of the Republican nomination last Tuesday, Donald Trump had much different picture of the baton he would like the voters to hand him. He said,
[The United States] is a magnificent place, a magnificent country, and it’s sad to see how far it’s come and gone … When you look at the depths where it’s gone, we can’t let that happen. We’re going to straighten it out. We’re going to close our borders. We’re going to drill baby drill.
Our cities are being overrun with migrant crime, and that’s Biden migrant crime. But it’s a new category and it’s violent, where they’ll stand in the middle of the street and have fistfights with police officers. And if they did that in their countries from where they came, they’d be killed instantly. They wouldn’t do that. So the world is laughing at us. The world is taking advantage of us.
[The “weaponization” of government against a political opponent] happens in third world countries. And in some ways, we’re a third world country. We live in a third world country with no borders …We need a fair and free press. The press has not been fair nor has it been free … The press used to police our country. Now nobody has confidence in them….
2024 is our final battle. We will demolish the deep state, we will expel the warmongers from our government—we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the Marxists, the communists and fascists. We will rout the fake news media, we will drain the swamp. We will be a liberated country again.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, and Rep. Cori Bush, Democrat of Missouri. (andrew caballero-reynolds/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
It is quite a year
What must we do with the rest of 2024, in the face of the huge feelings of political despair, endless antagonism, a faltering Ukraine and a devastated Gaza (and who knows what is happening with Iran?), SEPTA trying to figure out how to keep transit safe enough to ride, information mistrust, courts that don’t work right, people locked in isolation?
So far, a lot of us are dropping out of the political process and leaving it to the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene. We’re avoiding any associations like neighborhood and church, so they are all run by zealot factions or the C Team. Qualified people are deserting local government just when it is crucial for our well-being.
So far, a lot of us are numbing it all with drugs, with overspending on distracting experiences, or with endless screen time.
So far, at lot of us are building a wall around our families or pods like we learned to do in the pandemic if we were lucky enough to have a circle of relationships. If you’re alone, you might be barricaded in your studio apartment.
I know or know of people who are doing all these things. But mostly, I think we are wandering in the dark bumping into walls where there used to be no walls.
I can basically make it around my house in the dark — I wake up early a lot so I get a lot of practice. But if you put a footstool in my way or leave your shoes out, I might end up in the hospital. Many of us have run into so many walls and tripped over so many footstools, we feel we are perpetually recovering from injuries!
What should we do?
So we were talking about all this again the other day. I think the first thing to do is what we were doing: ask the question and talk about it. There are not going to be good solutions without dialogue. Serious conversation is the seedbed of inspiration. Apparently, most of our leaders are not going to make dialogue happen. We’ll have to start somewhere without them and build from there. Here is what I am thinking so far:
Get ready to lay on the tracks.The Nazis had train technology. Now there is the internet and AI all run by giant corporations which are slaves to profit. Don’t forget Exxon made $36 BILLION in profits in 2023. Elon Musk is worth ~$200 BILLION and he claims Putin is richer. That is just to say that the powers-that-be have a lot of “trains.” Tell the truth about them as personally as possible. Use all the means to make noise, show up, don’t get rolled over. But touch real people. Create places where people can gather — at least have a dinner party. We have to stick together. We can’t outsource our responsibility to care. If worse comes to worst we may have to take some risks to overcome evil with good.
Take care of your body and soul.“Depleted” and “exhausted” are terms people often use to describe themselves when I see them these days. But we often discover resources they have been undervaluing. We can rise again. There are so many things we can do to address the mental and spiritual health crises (amazing stats). During and after the pandemic, while churches were dying (mine included) I trained to be a certified spiritual director. One of the things I did was start a direction group for men. Soul care is more than “namaste” or taking deep breaths when you are nervous (both of which are a daily thing for me). Deep problems call us to go deeper and get healthier. We need to seek our truest selves and God’s guidance to find a way through 2024. A serious year needs serious people.
Build community. Last Lent we joined a new church. It has made a big difference, even if Church, in general, is still pitiful. If you can’t stand churches, you could at least begin with Meetup. Or you could take an extra step with the superficial relationships you have. But I hope you won’t give up on the church. Just because the media broadcasts all the corruption church people perpetrate all over the world does not mean every church is corrupt or God is dead – you’re probably not corrupt and you aren’t dead yet either. Are we really going to give over the church to psychopathic and narcissistic leaders? I recently learned of Apollo Quiboloy of the KOJC in the Philippines, who is a prime example of why you might be tempted to give up faith altogether, as well as the church. But it will cost the world dearly if it loses the salt and light of Christian alternativity.
Join up with action organizers. Being part of church counts. Your business or non-profit might count. There are lots of other people doing great things to build a new society and care for people facing great changes. I support the IRC and MCC. I’m allied with Third Act, Habitat for Humanity, Poor People’s Campaign, Philly Thrive and others. Keep taking yourself seriously.
Do something symbolic. Act like you mean something. We’re taking our own trip to the Edmund Pettis Bridge after the Christian Association of Psychological Studies Conference in Atlanta this month. First we will go to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery. Our feet need to go directions our hearts want to go for our souls to be strong and our minds to be convinced we matter. Stubbornly insist that who you are and the gifts you give are valuable. They make a difference to God and they save the world. Show yourself and leave the results to God.
Dare to admit it is not enough. You and I don’t have enough, let’s admit it. There is a streak of bad theology which teaches we are never enough, that we are bad and perpetually in need of doing better — we are wrong but we better get it right!! It has worn us out. I know I am tired of hearing about it. The Evangelicals have made it seem like salvation depends on our personal choices; the weight of our failures and the imminent collapse of the world as we know it is on our shoulders! Not so! Jesus is Lord.
But we can sense something more is required right now and most of us have no Idea just what it is. Even though I have laid out some good ideas, they seem kind of old to me. Some ideas are always good, but I’ve got a feeling this year might require a new version of them or something we’ve never even imagined. Even more likely, what is needed will require a new version of me. This post is a small symbol of me talking about it and getting serious. I don’t think we dare watch this year on TV.
Voting for someone who makes more sense than the other someone may be something. But it is not enough. Not voting or protesting against the powers is something. But it is not enough. I have given some suggestions on where to begin, but I don’t think they are enough. But I do think there will be moments this year when a path is laid out and good things need to happen, and you and I will be there.
After our great sunrise meeting in the park on Easter I ate all sorts of delectable things I had missed for a long time. It seemed like a good time to exercise off a few pieces of candy, so Gwen and I took off for our nearby forest path. On the last leg, we went by Treetop Quest, the zipline and ropes course fun that opened not too long ago. I wondered what all the cars were doing parked along Chamonix Dr. on Easter Sunday. Treetop Quest was not closed for Easter.
I think you need to be a pretty old Christian to be surprised at what is open on Easter Sunday. My grandson kept looking at his father’s watch to see if the family brunch was going to end in time for him to make his soccer practice…on Easter Sunday.
The end of Christian supremacy
I had a job titled “youth director” for much of my twenties. Just for a reference point, Ronald Reagan ousted Jimmy Carter as president in 1981 when I was 27. Not long before then, I had an unforgettable conversation with a high school girl about the resurrection of Jesus. She had never heard of it. She literally did not know what the word “resurrection” meant, for sure. I remember going home to Gwen and talking about this experience, after I changed a couple of diapers. I told her this was the first rivulet of a flood of newness coming upon us who were used to our environment being saturated with Christianity. Jimmy Carter, the real Christian, who later went on to prove it, was replaced by Ronald Reagan, who’s soulmate, Nancy, consulted astrologers for auspicious times for Ronnie to do things. Reagan begat Bush who begat Trump.
I should not be surprised about Treetop Quest being open on Easter or that atheists and Muslims often protest when the government persists in putting up Christmas trees and, even worse, Nativity scenes in December. The big news in the social scientist sphere last month was that the regular census of religious adherents in the U.S. showed for the first time that over half the country are not church members.
Let’s be clear, Gallup has been measuring “church membership” for 80 years and plenty of megachurches do not even have a way to be a member, formally. One’s attendance is their membership; being on the mailing list or fundraising list is one’s membership. But plenty of long-lived churches have seen a decline in their membership; it is minus 25% in Philadelphia’s region in the last decade. Non-college graduates and unmarried individuals showed the greatest decline. Declines were proportionately smaller among political conservatives, Republicans, married adults and college graduates. Those groups have the highest rates of church membership, along with Southern residents and non-Hispanic Black adults.
All this data might be more about how people do not affiliate than about the prevalence of Christianity. It might be about how people are freeing themselves from heretical American theology and fraudulent church systems rather than deserting Jesus. But my anecdotal experiences of a rivulet of unbelief among high school students in the 80’s became a river among Gen Xers in Philadelphia in the 90’s. It feels like a sea change in the 2020’s. Christian supremacy is dying in the United States. It died a long time ago elsewhere.
Resurrection in post-Christian culture
My historical heroes are Desert Fathers and Mothers, Benedictines, Franciscans, Anabaptists, Wesleyans and others who always took the Jesus way between church factions fighting for or submitting to political power. Even when fighting for social justice I never thought winning the fight was anyone’s final solution. So I remember sitting in the front yard with my buddies back in my twenties, plotting what we should do now that Ronald Reagan was ushering in a new godless era – how’s that for prophecy! The part of the church that decided to defend Christian supremacy eventually helped elect Donald Trump! As Dr. King taught us, it is good to be on the “right side of history” – that is, to keep making history in collaboration with Jesus. I still find great joy in being on that quest.
I am happy the church is finally more like a minority group in the United States. For one reason, it is very clarifying. You can’t assume someone even knows it is Easter. “Christmas” is fully superseded by “holiday” and thinking Sunday is a day of rest, or special (besides being the weekend) makes one weird. I forgot about my cell meeting one time after it became another TV show/Zoom last year — and I was in charge of it! Suddenly, being an actual Christian takes some effort when it is uncommon to be one. That effort is so good for us.
Parents now need to nurture faithful children rather than just send them to church. My parents were early adopters of post-Christianity. They probably would have been great modestly-believing church members if they had been able to get along with hypocrites. I could “go to church” as an act of differentiation. But no one would just send a kid to church these days; who knows what might happen to them? The children won’t hear about the resurrection in school, so they’ll need a parent. Our situation already sounds more like the Bible, doesn’t it?
The writers of the New Testament represent a tiny minority from a tiny part of the Roman Empire. They are not going along with what was going along. Jesus calls his way “narrow.” The broad way is leading to destruction, as in global warming and the cultural captivity of the church, among other things. Their message leads off with the incarnation of God and ends up with his resurrection. They never talk about going to church or taking over the government — they are the church and eventually undermine the government. Their message is so strong it keeps rising from the dead. American slaves get it, toss the faulty vessel in which it arrives and come up with their own improvement — they are still the most Christian element of the U.S. population! The liveliest parts of the 21st century church are in all the places European Christians brutally colonized the world in service to their idols. Jesus overcomes the world.
Being in the treetops on Sunday has a lot of merit and running around after a soccer ball could be a good thing. People have decided to follow Jesus under worse circumstances. Like I said, their master might not let them learn how to read or their colonizers might organize conflict between the people groups you just spent generations to reconcile. Jeff Bezos might spend his billions figuring out how to get more out of you. Another pandemic is not unlikely. In the face of all that, Jesus followers keep saying, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again,” echoing that first minority group writing the Bible:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. – 1 Peter 1:3-5
Thank God it is no longer February! That was a hard one. But it is still Lent; it is a pandemic. Despair in is the air, in the country and in the church. If you think you are drowning or barely keeping your nose above water, I have a little story for you after a few paragraphs.
Despair threaded its way through my feelings last week, too. A further reason, as if I needed one, was this: I kept encountering Christians hemmed in by the trash theology to which they were committed. I mean the kind of thinking that invited Trump, the unbeliever, to lead much of the Evangelical church as if he were Cyrus the Great now freeing Christian exiles. I mean the principle-based thinking that consigns devoted people to understanding the Bible as the end of faith when it is just the beginning. I mean the hierarchical thinking that constrains people to makes excuses for the church leaders who do them wrong, to the point where they can’t even feel their own loss or trauma without feeling guilty for having any and for not following the spin the leadership puts on their power plays.
Pollution in the ocean of grace
Maybe I am just despairing because I never seem to keep my mouth shut about these things and feel displeasing, as a result. I was in a class in which our teacher was giving a very effective presentation about being aware of power in a spiritual direction relationship. During the subsequent dialogue her students were sincerely self-aware of all the ways they might be at fault. They were ready to learn of any way they might cross a line that would diminish someone’s autonomy or impede their free choice. I thought controlling our little dyad with a commitment to “freedom” might be too small a context, reducing it down to something I could control might be a bit grandiose; it might betray some unprocessed philosophy. So I had to get in my two cents worth, as well, appearing a bit too passionate, I’m afraid (as passionate as one can get in a Zoom session, at least). I said something like, “Our teacher got interested in power because Jean Vanier was exposed for taking sexual advantage of his directees, among others. What’s more, an authoritarian president unleashed a wave of threat in the country and a return to unveiled white supremacy!”
My righteous anger kept simmering until I read a little news story that became a parable of hope for me. Even less-than-complete thinking might be a means of salvation for our miracle-working God — Lord knows I am not complete! So I want to share the story with you, along with my interpretation. You are probably clinging to some bit of trash theology in a sea of confusion, threat and chaos yourself. And I think we all probably feel very small in a very big ocean every day, even when there is no virus to fear.
Here’s the story
Before I start, let me remind you. While the legislatures rush to spend time on restricting rampant voter participation, the Pacific Ocean is quickly filling up with plastic. In 2019, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the Pacific Ocean was “crying out in despair.” Scientists warn the pollution crisis could leave more plastic by weight in the oceans than fish by 2050.
Those two more cents being offered, here’s the parable.
Pitcairn Island
According to the Washington Post, a supply ship called the Silver Supporter left New Zealand on Feb. 8 for the 3,000 mile trip to the Pitcairn Islands (famously settled by mutineers from the Bounty in 1789). About seven days later, the crew discovered they were one member short. Their chief engineer was missing.
Around 4 am, during his watch on the night shift, Vidam Perevertilov from Lithuania felt hot and dizzy. He went out on the deck for some fresh air. Apparently, he fainted and fell overboard into the dark waters without a life jacket. He had trouble keeping his head above water as the sleeping ship steadily moved away. But he summoned enough energy to swim over a mile to a black object he could see on the horizon. The object turned out to be a detached buoy, a big piece of sea rubbish.
He was gone for six hours before someone sounded the alarm. The crew members studied Perevertilov’s work logs to try to pinpoint the coordinates of where he was last certified as on board. Distress calls were made to surrounding ships, and the French navy assisted in the hunt. A French meteorological service mapped a possible drift path. The ship’s captain continued to hunt for the missing crew member by steering the ship back and running various search patterns.
Despite his determination to pull through, as the hours slowly passed Perevertilov began to lose hope of ever being found. For sixteen hours he bobbed up and down in the cold and dark and then in the searing heat of the morning. He found himself using his final moments to reflect on his life.
Weak with dehydration, skin burning, and giving up hope, he was shocked to spot the Silver Supporter in the distance. He waved his arm and yelled for help. A passenger on board heard his cry, describing it as a “weak, human shout.” Everyone thought it was incredible someone heard a voice. The man’s ecstatic family thought the whole rescue operation was almost impossible to believe.
His son said his father’s will to survive was strong; even at 52, he was fit and healthy. When asked about the piece of trash he found, Perevertilov said he left the fishing buoy exactly where he had found it — just in case it was ever needed to save someone else.
Not a real island
I forget that God does a lot of good with “trash”
Don’t forget that he left the trash as he found it when he was found.
This story changed my mind about all the poor believers I lamented. Perhaps they had been overboard a long time and were about to give up. They swam toward some promising trash theology that kept them afloat. (I won’t go in to how relative my judgment of “trash” may be). They got spiritually dehydrated and often got burned, but it was better than drowning. In fact, the trash saved them until the big ship came and rescued them, brought them on board for healing and took them home. I can hear the Apostle Paul saying to me, “Would you despise the trash that saved your brother? Isn’t your sister’s life worth more than your estimation of goodness?” Well, no, I wouldn’t and yes, it is. Jesus is made known by a leaf in the forest, a small voice on a mountain or a Presbyterian sermon. A fine acquaintance from my youth started his journey of faith by pausing for a televangelist while flipping around the channels. God’s love is unrestrained.
I decided, once again, that I can afford to be a lot less critical of the dangerous debris floating around on the ocean of the collective unconscious. A lot of people have a will to live and not even trash Christianity can keep them from meeting God and growing into their fullness. I may be right to point out that the ocean of God’s grace is crying out in despair because it is polluted with a huge gyre of plastic, unnourishing, detrimental religious thinking.
But listen, there are all sorts of faint voices crying out and waving their hands for help. God sees. I should open my eyes, and my heart, as well.
What came to 
It was the best speech I ever heard him make. But I think he gave an even better message as the cameras followed him around the chamber when he was done. He graciously and cheerfully attended to a roomfull of egotists and looked like a regular guy doing it. He looked like a caring adult. He has a daunting task: negotiating with a Netanyahu, speaking to a Representative in a Trump T-shirt (left), spotting George Santos in a crystal-encrusted collar and seeing poor 
The writers of the New Testament represent a tiny minority from a tiny part of the Roman Empire. They are not going along with what was going along. Jesus calls his way “
