Hope Beyond Hopelessness

About 10 months ago when much of the world was still optimistic I was undergoing a biological reaction, known as the Jarisch-Herxheimer Reaction, to some heavy anti-viral and antibiotic medications I had begun taking for my diagnosis of myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME.  The Herxheimer Reaction, or 'herxing' as it is known among the chronically ill, is the profoundly miserable response to having massive cellular and sub-cellular die off. My reaction was strong and lasted a couple of months. Among cancer survivors who have also experienced herxing the consensus is that herxing is comparable to and perhaps worse than chemotherapy treatments.  I am about to undertake a much stronger bout of anti-virals and antibiotics in the coming new year. I expect my herx to be pretty heavy as my most recent blood work looks damn nasty. Happy 2017! Open wide for a couple of months of pure physical misery while you try to resist an overtly racist tyrant-in-waiting in the White House!  
And this is what brings me to my discussion on hope. It was in February of last year that I got up the strength to take a walk and to meditate on hope. Here's what I wrote then: 

Today I am grateful that God has given me the strength to take walks the past few days.  It had been a couple of months, which was starting to really get me down.  

I am doubly grateful today as while walking I believe that I heard and felt God's presence and voice.  God guided me in meditating on true hope v. false confidence and on thinking about the false self we show on the outside v. the true work God is doing within us inwardly.  

I came to this thought about hope which may be helpful or may just be bunk, I think time will tell.  "Hope is living confidently within the sphere of power and authority of one who loves you."  

Grace and peace with all of you. 

Today I return to this thought: "Hope is living confidently within the sphere of power and authority of one who loves you" - but I do so with some context to help explain how I got there. Which is to say, I only came to a thought about hope because all of my previous hopes, hopes I believed I had the strength to grow, nurture and possess within myself, had been over the course of the previous 14 months systematically and utterly destroyed. 

Ask a healthy person, an optimistic person, a person who has yet to have their false hopes destroyed, "What is hope?" and that healthy person - that person I was 30 months ago - will likely think the question is, "What are your hopes?" Ask me in the summer of 2014, "What is hope?" and I would answer concretely with my plans for the future, my hopes. 
 - Hope is the backpacking trips I'll take with my sons on the Pacific Coast Trail in their coming teenage years.
- Hope is the trips I will take to Kenya, to India, to Cambodia as I learn the spiritual process of solidarity with the poor. 

- Hope is the classes I will teach, the conferences I will lead, the workshops I will develop, the books I will write.

- Hope is the better world I will help create. The friends I will visit. The life I will live. 

But what is hope when all this is taken away? In the first few months of my illness - December through March 2014/15 - I was cast into a type of darkness that I can only describe as hell. I could barely speak coherently. My brain ceased to function. I would spend days in a row, weeks in a row, in bed. Light hurt. (The lamps in our kitchen will forever be known as 'the retina burners' because of the time I couldn't figure out how to ask Jewel to turn off the lights when they were hurting me and so I said, instead, "Jewel, could you turn off the... retina burners.") Sounds hurt. I experienced near constant migraines in which it felt as though my forehead were in a vice or someone was drilling holes in the top of my head. I was so exhausted that lying down was more effort than I could muster. My body felt as though it was built from the heaviest matter in the universe.  

What is more, God completely and totally abandoned me. I know theologians and pastors who will tell me that God never abandons anyone, that God's love is more sure than the sunrise each morning, but I know better.  I stand with the Psalmist, with Job and with Jesus all whom cried in one way or another, "Father, why have you abandoned me?"  With this abandonment from God came also an abandonment of what I would call my 'self'.  That is to say, I experienced a complete tearing and transforming detachment from all that I was and all that I hoped to be. I lived without a past and without a future - not merely the existential angst of waking up to a mid-life crisis, but the utter crisis of actual existence. From one moment to the next nothing but agony. No memory. No expectation. Utter darkness. Stripped naked. Hopelessness.  

This hopelessness is what I now call the state of what remains when nothing's left. In hindsight it has been oddly and sometimes refreshingly liberating. Yes, I lament so much of what I have lost. But I have gained something that I am not sure that I could have gained in any other way, namely, the discovery that the hope that I possessed and manufactured from within was not hope at all, but part of the construct of my false self. I cannot possess my own hopes and simultaneously pray, "Your will be done, on earth as it is heaven." I have come to believe that perhaps the discovery of the hopelessness of my hopes is the pearl of great price that Jesus hinted at. 

And so then what does remain when there's nothing left? A voice. My voice. My self. And also my self somehow alive despite the utter rock hard reality that it was not my conscious effort to will myself into being. There is something beyond myself that is incontrovertibly real simply by the fact of my own existence.  And it is this 'beyond myself' that constitutes my being, or as Paul once put it by echoing the Athenian poets, "For in [God] we live and move and have our being." And this is hope - the actual substance and reality of hope.

  

Hope is not my dreams of a preferred future. Hope is not the collectivized dreams of humanity's preferred future as directed by me or some other wise, energetic, clever or powerful person. Hope is the reality of the one who lies beyond our being and constitutes the 'other' that makes being possible.  Hope is constituted by the reality God wills. 

It took the utter withdrawal of God's presence, the visceral experience of complete abandonment for me to realize the fullness of my humility. Not even one cell in my body that dies off as a part of my experience of suffering is actually owned by me. Not the slightest bit of dysfunctional sub-cellular matter in my body that starves my muscles of nutrients and forces my body into a state of partial hibernation actually belongs to me. I did not will them into being. I did not will them to function when I was in health. I cannot will them to return to health. I really am not my own but belong in my body and soul in my living and in my dying to something other than myself. This is what darkness has taught me. This is what hopelessness feels like and where the contours of hope begins. 

So, I took a walk. And on this walk a still small voice, a whisper, silence spoke to me and what the voice of silence said was this, "I love you. Walk in my love. At the edge of darkness, in the place where nothing's left, that's where you will realize the prayer I taught you, 'Not my will, but your will be done.'" This is boundary between despair, hopelessness, utter darkness, and hope. I die to my self. From somewhere beyond my self love speaks to me. I live again. Hope begins. But it is not mine other than to receive as a gift no more under my control than the wind, the flight of hummingbirds, or the advent of the cosmos. I am wounded by the concrete realization of my helplessness and the physical manifestation of darkness. I am wounded, broken, lost in darkness. I know hope. 

Moses with the Burning Bush, 1966 - Marc Chagall

On Hating Evil: Searching for the Roots of Moral Malfeasance

I am compiling my thoughts and notes for an essay I hope to write (if my health allows for enough sustained thought) that for now I'm calling, "The Lost Spiritual Art of Hating Evil". The basic question is: why do we (humanity as a species) repeatedly, generation after generation, participate in genocide, mass incarceration, oppression of the poor, racist and/or ethnocentric enslavement and so forth, all the while believing ourselves to be the moral heroes of the story? I feel this is a pressing issue for us as Americans and in particular mainstream American Christians whose self-narrative of righteousness blinds us to much of our history of moral cowardice and outright moral malfeasance.
At any rate, I feel that this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer gets very close to the substance of the matter. It is worth noting that Bonhoeffer stands out as a hero because masses of his Christian countrymen from a nation steeped in the Protestant Reformation left him nearly to stand alone while evil rose to prominence.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer - "On Stupidity" from Letters and Papers from Prison

Nativity - The Birth of Peace as Darkness Descends

Over the past year I have returned to the movie 'Of Gods and Men' in my meditations with some regularity. The movie recounts the true story of a group of French monks who were assassinated by Jihadists in Algeria in 1996. As our world edges ever closer to a war of ideologies - apocalyptic and nihilistic Christianism v. apocalyptic and nihilistic Islamism -  I return to the lives of these remarkable, humane, humble men who lived, not perfectly, but sincerely, in the Spirit and way of Jesus as neighbors and friends of Islam. We do not have to be at war. We can determine to live in the Shalom our Creator desires. In this spirit I want to share the farewell letter that their prior, Frere Christian, wrote just before the inevitable eventuality of his martyrdom.

"Should it ever befall me, and it could happen today, to be a victim of the terrorism swallowing up all foreigners here, I would like my community, my church, my family, to remember that my life was given to God and to this country. That the Unique Master of all life was no stranger to this brutal departure. And that my death is the same as so many other violent ones, consigned to the apathy of oblivion. I’ve lived enough to know, I am complicit in the evil that, alas, prevails over the world and the evil that will smite me blindly.

I could never desire such a death. I could never feel gladdened that these people I love be accused randomly of my murder. I know the contempt felt for the people here, indiscriminately. And I know how Islam is distorted by a certain Islamism.

This country, and Islam, for me are something different. They’re a body and a soul.

My death, of course, will quickly vindicate those who call me naïve or idealistic, but they must know that I will be freed of a burning curiosity and, God willing, will immerse my gaze in the Father’s and contemplate with him his children of Islam as he sees them. This thank you which encompasses my entire life includes you, of course, friends of yesterday and today, and you too, friend of last minute, who knew not what you were doing. Yes, to you as well I address this thank you and this farewell which you envisaged. May we meet again, happy thieves in Paradise, if it pleases God the Father of us both. Amen. Insha’Allah."

These words from Frere Christian are a living Spirit-endowed word. My prayer is that this word will fall heavily on my heart today, and that it might fall heavily on the hearts of people of all faiths or of no faith throughout the world. As we struggle in this historical moment of darkness descending may we resist the call to arms, the howls of the dogs of war. Instead may the Prince of Peace reign in our hearts and minds. 

William Congdon - Nativita 1960

The Wind Is Howling

Today's song for meditation is Bob Dylan's 'All Along the Watchtower'.  Bob Dylan once said that every time he performed the song it it felt like a cover of Jimi Hendrix' version, so that's what I'm sharing. As you reflect on the lyrics keep in mind two passages from the Judeo/Christian prophetic tradition (Isaiah 21 and Luke 23) that served as Dylan's frame. Dylan's genius in this song is closing with "...the wind began to howl."  Dylan has framed the conversation between the joker and the thief within the dramatic context of the watchers of Isaiah who announce the collapse of Babylon. But the frame isn't closed. The ending of the song is a doorway that enters our reality, our time, and our frame of reference. Are we watching? Are we alert? Do we know what time it is? And if we do know what time it is have we reckoned with the coming storm?

Isaiah 21:5-9
They set the tables, they spread the rugs, they eat, they drink! Get up, you officers, oil the shields! 

This is what the Lord says to me, "Go, post a lookout and let him report what he sees. When he sees chariots with teams of horses, riders on donkeys or riders on camels, let him be alert, fully alert!"

And the lookout shouted:
"Day after day, my Lord, I stand on the watchtower; every night I stand at my post. Look, here comes a man in a chariot with a team of horses. And he gives back the answer, 'Babylon has fallen! Babylon has fallen! All the images of its gods lie shattered on the ground!"

Luke 23:39-43

One of the criminals (the joker) who hung there hurled insults at him: "Aren't you the messiah? Save yourself and us!" But the other criminal (the thief) rebuked him, "Don't you fear God since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what we deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." Jesus answered him, "Today you will be with me in paradise. Amen."  

Bob Dylan - All Along the Watchtower

"There must be some way out of here, " said the joker to the thief,

"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."

"No reason to get excited, " the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

Chagall - Isaiah

It's Not Dark Yet, But It's Getting There

I expect that passing from one age to another feels a lot like this. I am praying for Pope Francis daily. Soon he will be the last of the major global leaders who still believes that in each individual human person rests the image of God. This idea has never been under more threat in my lifetime. Once this idea is extinguished all manner of hell will be permissible. It does feel very much as though night is falling. Still, as long as I have breath I intend to witness to the existence of the light.

Bob Dylan has taken on a special meaning to me of late.  This recent song is a treasure:

Loving Our Neighbor Means Protecting Their Vote

Voting rights are the beating heart of protecting the vulnerable, enfranchising the powerless and restraining the powerful from trampling the poor. When we participate in the partisan political game of hoarding this blessing of a basic human right we are guilty of hating our neighbor. This is why MLK and so many other great Christians were willing to die to enfranchise the vote to the powerless during the Civil Rights movement of the late 50's and 60's. I cannot fully describe with words just how angry and saddened I am to watch so many Christians get caught up in partisanship on this basic principle of human rights to the detriment of justice and love of neighbor.

I am mindful of the words of Ezekiel...

I lament that these words speak so piercingly to our time and to the state of Christianity in America. For those of you who are interested in fighting for voting rights here is a current campaign under way to protect and enfranchise the votes of all Americans. There may be other campaigns worth joining, do your research. The key is to work collaboratively at a local level. Build friendships and community while you stand in the gap and repair the breach.

God of Chaos Part 3 - Some further explication

Since my post, "The God of Chaos Unleashed",  I have begun to receive a fair amount of interest in explaining in more depth how I view what is unfolding.  Below is a summary of one conversation in particular. 

Question:
Hey Dan, can you translate in simple language for those of us in the dark about what is actually happening in the Iraq conflict and about the Eurasianist movement. I am guilty of not taking the time to really understand what is going on or what I can do about it.

Answer:
So Syria is in a chaotic civil war with multiple factions. The US and the world at large has largely decided it was too costly too intervene. In the vacuum, Putin and Assad (leader of Syria) have smashed the opposition and are now (at this moment) finishing off the opposition in the city of Aleppo wholesale sans merci.

There is a philosphical/theological movement that has been developing for some time but was adopted by Putin over the course of the past 6-8 years or so (students of Russia can help me here) known as Euroasianism. This movement is Christian in the broadest sense, but I like to call it Christianism b/c it is linked to a drive to return each race/ethnography (I hate to use the word race because it is a lie) to its own natural geographic space, each using it's native form of governance and form of worship that grows naturally of its own heritage.

In this theology/philosophy for Russia the goal is to regain the empire of Eurasian lands ruled by it's rightful supreme race, the Russians. While the natural religion of the Russian is 'Christian' in the broadest sense (in a similar way the KKK is American Christian theology) the current state of this Russio quasi-Christian religion is that it must destroy the life and world that has developed in the West (broadly speaking, liberalism) in which race, culture and religious heritage were subordinate to ideas - also known as 'Logos'. Hence, America has no legitimate culture, heritage or religion unless and until it is 'Made Great Again' - which is to say returned to it's ethno puritan roots (broadly speaking). By claiming that all humanity hold 'inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' we deny the dignity of the true human races who are not ruled by ideas, or logos, but by the achievement of victory and so forth.

Trump's bargain with Putin is that Russia should rule Eurasia just as America, once 'Made Great Again' should rule the West. We each have a natural manifest destiny. It is not clear to me what would happen to Western Europe, but presumably each ethnicity would have the right to allow its natural governance and religion return, whether paganism in Northern Europe or various types of Christianism etc. It is worth noting that the Breivik Manifesto (at nearly 1500 pages) lays out a pagan/Christian path for the Nordic countries known as Odinism and that Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, using the substance of that manifesto sets out a path for the Netherlands, etc.

Because the world has been so dominated by Western liberalism - the logos - the only method to building a world habitable by true humanity is to destroy liberalism and reason/logos once for all. Because Liberalism has tied its fate to the idea of multicultural pluralism it is inherently weak and ready to be toppled. The method for destroying it is to fully embrace the spirituality of 'chaos' in opposition to the spirituality of 'logos'.

Now lets tie this back to Syria. Syria belongs to the Asia part of the globe that should be dominated by Russia - whether as a client state or directly. Islam is viewed as an inferior religion with inferior culture/governance/history etc. and so should be cleansed by chaos thus returning Syria to its natural state.

Question: 
Dan thanks for the info! I'd heard of this rise of Eurasianism but hadn't been able to wrap my brain around the essence of it. Thanks for the summary and links. Very scary stuff. It does help to put some of the pieces in place to help explain parts of the bigger picture. Now what to do about it??

Answer:
 I find MLK's grid really useful. Spend some time in quiet discernment in your life over what kind of things you could positively take part in and get started. The more it's an act that comes in the context of friendship or community the better. The most radical prophetic actions in the years to come will be concrete acts of love: feed the hungry, house the homeless, welcome the stranger, befriend the powerless. Acts of love build trust, become the roots of beloved community, and make denying the humanity of others impossible.

MLK's Threefold Work of Social Change

Blind Watchmen

The scripture I keep returning to the past three months is from the prophet of Israel, Isaiah.  Note that the 'watchmen' and 'shepherds' of Israel are the ruling class of Israel, but also and most particularly the prophets and priests - the leaders of the religious life of Israel.

                                                             Isaiah 56: 9-12

Update: God of Chaos - McCain and Graham Respond to Slaughter in Aleppo

It appears that a nexus of resistance to Donald Trump is emerging the alliance of Senators McCain and Graham.  While their statement says nothing about Trump and hammers President Obama (and I am willing to admit, rightly so - the events of the past 48 hours in Aleppo make this plain) the important thing to note is that this positions them as the chief critics of Trump's vision of Syria as a client state of Russia.


Statement by McCain and Graham on the Slaughter in Aleppo:


    

Further Update: What clear choice did Obama ever have? 

The Mad Genius of Refusing to Share in Reality

I keep wondering why Trump repeatedly fully denies the CIA intelligence when he is confronted by it.  And beyond that, why he refuses to stay briefed by US intelligence at all.  

Then I realized the sheer brilliance, the mad genius of it.  Trump is refusing to give any legitimacy to 'our' reality, the reality we all up to now assumed to be true, at all.  It's his basic operating principle.  Instead, he inserts his own 'truth' and if we are to be governed by him we must begin to operate by his rules, his reality.  He is not beholden or restrained by 'our' reality at all.  He moves only by his reality.  

If Trump doesn't 'know' or 'believe to be true' the reports the CIA gives him regarding Russian hacking, he will not 'know' or 'believe to be true' any report that doesn't help him or fit his reality grid. What's more he can always just say, "I'm not taking that intelligence briefing. I have my own intelligence."  It's absolutely amazingly simple.  What are we going to do about it? What can be done about it? There is no law that will stop him.  We are simply at his mercy unless we refuse to cooperate. That's it. That's all there is to it.

Update (12/17/16): I just came across this quote from John Fowles' novel The Magus that explains the dynamic I am getting at quite well.  

The God of Chaos Unleashed

As I write this reports are flooding in tonight that there are mass atrocities happening in Aleppo carried out by soldiers of Assad against his own civilians with a lead role for the troops of Putin. While we sit idle barely taking the energy to even bear witness to this horror I want to point to a quote from an article on Alexander Gudin that was published in the National Review some two years ago. In this article we begin to understand just how predictable this moment of death and chaos is for anyone who would simply take Putin's Euroasian Christianism seriously. (see below).

I need to say that I am disappointed in President Obama's lack of resolve against Assad and Putin. In Obama's favor it is fair to say his rejoinder is correct - we simply did not have the resolve as a people after Iraq to go to war again - neither in blood or treasure. I am guilty here, too. Perhaps if Obama had led we would have followed. Perhaps we would have been bogged down in a quagmire not unlike Iraq or Viet Nam. Perhaps we would have triggered a cataclysm. I have no more to add to the overarching argument. The past is worth arguing, and others who understand the situation will have better things to say than I do.

However, while I am disappointed in Obama's lack of resolve I am also near despair knowing that as a nation we are in the process of placing Vladimir Putin's governing philosophy very near to the center of our own governance. While Obama lacked resolve, Trump applauds, supports, and defends Putin and Assad. This is the 'strength' Trump believes we too must show. Even at this very moment Trump is gathering a significant number of my fellow citizens, people I've gone to church with, perhaps people in my own extended family, who are actively defending and supporting Putin, leader of this chaos.

As the reports flow in of the 100's - 1,000's of mothers, fathers, sons and daughters - unarmed and helpless - burned alive, bombed, gassed, torn apart; as the reports come in of the remaining staff of the last hospital summarily executed; remember, this is not ISIS or Al Qaeda, this is now on the cusp of being us. You and me. Perhaps not willingly. But as we accept our new governance, it is us all the same. There may still be time to stop our drift from wrestling with the charge of being feckless in the face of evil to that of becoming complicit partners in genocide. We will see how things play out in the coming days and weeks. But already the tide has changed. The gods of chaos are unleashed. The logos that became flesh and dwelt among us is trampled underfoot and crucified once again. And we beheld it. And for so many of us, we welcomed it with wide embrace.

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis - A Poem

ME

The wounds of so much lost

    Still

Knowing what we clutched
   were trinkets

Cherishing what we took for granted
    what remains
    now is all we have left

Life as a Window

There are so many aspects of a chronic illness that are painful to endure that it's hard to know where to begin when someone genuinely would like to be a listening ear.  I used to go hiking 3-5 miles in the hills around my hometown on a regular basis. This was the backbone of my spiritual life. To walk, pray, and contemplate for 2-3 hours a few times a week was the essence of my being.  Since being struck two years ago this has disappeared almost entirely.  I cannot remember the last time I walked for even 15 minutes - it's been six months or more.

But the point of this post isn't to complain about how my life has changed, but to simply explain why my blog posts will come in fits and starts. There are days, like today, where I am barely functional.  I have a dozen or more ideas for posts percolating.  I have an outline for a book that I am working on. I have books and articles that I would like to read.  But today I have nothing.  Even listening to Bach or Arvo Part for 5 minutes is more than I can do.  I cannot talk or hold a conversation.  Miraculously, I find that I can type thoughts. It's a form of communication that works even when spoken words fail me completely.  I am storing up my energy with the hope that I can be cheerful and encouraging when my boys get home from school. It's all I have to give today.

On days like today I remember that I am not actually, the captain of my own ship.  I am not the master of my own fate.  My mind, body, spirit is too frail for the lie of self-reliance that I used to live even while believing that I was, indeed, on a spiritual path of honest submission.  There is a submission that cannot be learned without outward intervention.  It is a submission that is different than resignation.  It is a humility of limits.  Today I remember I am nobody and nothing. I am an empty vessel. Today my hope is that there is a love beyond reasoning that fills empty vessels. This kind of hope was what I always was trying to teach back when I had health and strength and reckoned that I owned my body and my life - even though I really didn't know what it meant to go through that doorway of submission.  Now I am beginning to know what before I had merely intuited to grasp.  Now I experience life as though looking through a window.  But oddly, the glass is less dark.  It is the letting go brings me closer to being face to face with the love beyond reason. 

The Faith of the Oppressed

I am always humbled by the faith of the oppressed.  In the Christian calendar we are currently in the season of Advent. The great text of Advent for me, as for the church worldwide, has always been the song and prayer of expectant Mary, known as the Magnificat...

And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
And his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”

Theologically, it is essential that this song of praise and statement of faith from an oppressed woman be coupled with the tears that Mary will shed some 33 years later as she watched her son scapegoated and lynched by the mob, the religious leadership of her people, and the power of Roman Empire.  The great song of Mary and of all mothers who must weep over the death of their children due to injustice is known as the Stabat Mater.  

The Magnificat and the Stabat Mater, then, are the bookends of the faith of the oppressed.  They are the cry of hope and of despair intertwined. They are the beating, bleeding heart of true religion.  And they are the archetype of every generation's need for lament.

Today I am struck to the core by faith of Judy Scott, mother of unjustly murdered Walter Scott, as she responded to the news that there would be no justice in this world for her or her dead son.  "It's not over...until God says it's over."    Judy Scott, may you be comforted today by the great cloud of witnesses and by Mary and Jesus who stand in solidarity with you.

The Second Coming - W.B. Yeats

Bad Religion and the Banality of Evil

The danger we face during in this current outbreak of authoritarian ethno-nationalism is that many people genuinely are feeling the pain of displacement due to globalism. We genuinely do lack the spiritual and moral capacity to adequately address the loss of identity and meaning that are essential components of being human.  The power of false leaders always rests in the vehemence and energy of those who follow, the joiners.  The synergy is toxic and impossible to steer.  

The dynamic I am talking about was clearly defined by Hannah Arendt but has largely been misunderstood in the popular understanding of Arendt's observation.  The banality of evil isn't that we mindlessly follow charismatic leaders, it is that charismatic leaders fill the void of meaninglessness and vapid theological circumstances with a dangerous opening to true belief in essential lies.  In short, the banality of evil is bad religion. 

Trump has declared, "I alone can fix it."  Millions believe him. Unchecked, almost anything will be justifiable for the true believer joined to this reality. 


Misreading 'Eichmann in Jerusalem' by Roger Berkowitz - key graphs

We Are Legion - A Poem

We Are Legion

Desperately desiring to wear the crown
to be the heroes of every story
 we build mythologies
  of how we marched on Selma
  of how we fought at Gettysburg
  I am Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

  Oh how we hung on our cross in Jerusalem!

  But in truth, when it mattered
   we were the legions of Rome.

Standing for What We Know to Be True: Gaining Our Bearings in the New Landscape - 2

The first two paragraphs of Chimamanda Adichie's article posted today in the New Yorker are an absolute powerhouse of truth of how we must respond when the moral and spiritual landscape shifts so dramatically.  Without a great deal of intentional spiritual formation the urge to put the moral and spiritual responsibility on those who are most victimized and vulnerable is visceral and universal.  The real danger is that this urge is the first step towards scapegoating and if left unchecked will always - if history has anything to teach us - lead to massive disaster.

The new landscape will present many with an opportunity to unleash hidden, latent, perhaps even unconscious prejudices.  The outbursts become normal. They collect into a new understanding of what is formally acceptable culturally and then eventually, legally.  How does it end for us in this new landscape we've entered?  I cannot say. No one can.  However, I can promise this: when left unchecked the moral and spiritual responsibility that is laid at the feat of the vulnerable, the victim, the weak, those unprotected by law or culture will lead towards collective scapegoating of some form or another - always violently.

Here's the opening two paragraphs.  I urge you to read the whole piece.

Gaining Our Bearings in a New Landscape - 1

How did we get here and actually, where the heck are we? The landscape of America and the world has shifted so dramatically in the past year that it is quite normal to feel lost, disoriented.  The thing to do when lost is to locate one's bearings.  I am hoping in the coming days to highlight articles, ideas, and conversations that help us locate where we are and how we got here.

The first article (unfortunately titled in my opinion) by Jacob Siegel recounts the ascendancy and demise of paleo-conservativism and its resurrection into the alt-right through the life and work of Paul Gottfried.  The thing I would highlight as someone who is distinctly an anti-racist is how thoroughly these words from the Apostle Paul are now under attack in the heart of the levers of power: "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

The Alt-Right's Jewish Godfather

"... And The Evil of Banality" - Post election reaction 6

Brian Beutler of the New Republic has quickly become essential reading for me in the era of Trumpism.  In his opinion piece, "Donald Trump and the Evil of Banality" he turns Hannah Arendt's now famous description of Adolf Eichmann (Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil) inside out to lay out how even the most mundane week of a Trump presidency will be an opportunity for disaster.

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"Sometimes you have to be rougher." - Election reaction 5

Dondald Trump's reaction

In his 60 minutes interview with Leslie Stahl this past Sunday Donald Trump gave this reaction to his election: "I'll conduct myself - in a very good manner, but depends on what the situation is. Sometimes you have to be rougher."  Let this sink in.  

Brian Beutler of the New Republic captures the Trump reaction in his article, "Donald Trump Is Already Acting Like an Authoritarian".  


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President Obama's Subtext - Post election reaction 4

Among President Obama's strengths has been his capacity to get to the reality of a matter in a way that is forthright and lacking drama.  His press conference yesterday is a prime example.  He's in a position where for the good of the country and the world he must remain calm, ensure a peaceable transition of power and ensure that the key institutions of the nation have a chance of surviving a Trump presidency.  If he's wise (and thank God that he is) it's essential that he refrain from lashing out or blasting Trump, a man who spent the better part of the last 8 years spreading vicious and racist lies about Obama's very legitimacy as President.  However, Obama did make some key points on Monday and Brian Beutler of the New Republic lays them out well. 

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The question many of us are waiting to see answered with baited, nauseated breathe is: will the rules and norms and laws survive Trumpism, let alone reign it in?  History has shown that a metric shit-ton of hell can break loose before justice bends the world back towards shalom.

'The Republic Repeals Itself' - Post election reaction 3

I am so hoping that in 15 years we will look back on Andrew Sullivan's post-election reaction in a lighthearted way, "Oh, that Andrew Sullivan, he was always one for drama."  However, his visionary insights on gay marriage, the potential of an Obama presidency, and constant warnings regarding the likelihood of a Trump presidency show he has an eye for the bends in the flow of history.

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"So What's Your Plan?" - Post election reaction 2

This reaction from Brittany Packnett, who "is the co-founder of Campaign Zero, shares the No. 3 spot on Politico's 2016 list of 50 most influential, and was named to Time magazine's 12 New Faces of Black Leadership," asks white voters in general and white Trump voters who consider themselves puzzled and dismayed at the charge of racism in particular, "White people, what is your plan for the Trump presidency?" 

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Post Election Reactions - 1

I'm going to catalogue reactions to the election that strike me as adding vital perspective.  The first reaction is from a letter highlighted by James Fallows of the Atlantic Monthly.  The author of the letter is Joseph Britt of Wisconsin who has worked on campaigns and in government for Republican politicians.

You can read Joseph Britt's letter here.

The key thought regarding the non-wwc Republican vote:

The More Things Change...

...the more they stay the same.  This word from the prophet Ezekiel some 2500 years ago has been playing like a loop in my mind for some time now - particularly that part about mistreating the foreigner, denying them justice and the failure of God's people to protect the weak and vulnerable. 

On Jesus' Teaching 'Love Your Enemies'

Jesus taught,  “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[ and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven."  (Matthew 5)

There's a couple of things worth noting here:

1. A basic presupposition Jesus has is that if we're following him correctly we should have enemies. 

2. Being a child of the heavenly Father in this world requires having enemies and being persecuted - and yes, then praying for and loving enemies and persecutors.  

What Is Happening?

 Like I've said before, things are moving much faster than almost anyone realizes.

Planning Our Solidarity

Do you remember Trump's campaign pledge to create a registry, a watchlist for all people of Muslim faith in the United States.  This was a separate promise than the one to keep all Muslims from entering America.  Do you remember how conservative activist Charles Koch called Trump's Muslim registry plan 'reminiscent of Nazi Germany'?  Sure you do.  Well, the plan to create this registry is still underway. Apparently, the details are forthcoming.  

Here's what I am preparing to do and hope millions of other Americans will join me in doing: I am planning on volunteering to be listed on the registry.  It is not an article of faith to join a registry. Such a registry is utterly based on the lie of discrimination and hatred towards a specific religious faith.  In no way would volunteering for such a registry diminish or demean the Muslim faith or be a lie about my own faith as a Christian. Indeed, standing in solidarity with those who suffer is an essential component of all true religion.

"... the Silence of our Friends"

What Will It Take?

What I am waiting for, and truly desirous of seeing, is even one Christian Trump supporter denounce this kind of behavior.