The Great Illumination
May what we are seeing and experiencing lead us to something better, together.
It’s been a while, friends, and I am glad to be back here today. April, May, and June were pretty wild months for me overall, anything I thought I wanted to write became a fleeting thought in the reality of Refuge, family, #communityheals season starting, and real life. Today I’m hoping to break the pattern of the past few months and make space to say what’s been swirling around in my soul. If anything, it’s to remind me of what I want for my future, our future.
Our society is in the middle of what I’ve been calling “The Great Illumination.”
The curtain has been torn back, the scales are falling from our eyes, the walls of denial are falling down, and we are in a wild, tumultuous, scary, and critical season of our nation’s (and the world’s and the church’s and our society’s) story.
We’re seeing in full force:
What unhealthy, unchecked, self-aggrandizing power looks like.
How the impact of social media has reshaped culture and continues to dismantle truth.
How far a narcissistic bully’s wrecking ball can swing from here to around the world.
Patriarchy’s and Christian Nationalism’s tentacles and reach.
How much we love to scapegoat.
What it feels like to have the lies of white supremacy, economic supremacy, straight supremacy, Christian supremacy, male supremacy be on grand display.
The extent that leaders will go to protect their power and proximity to it even when they know it’s wrong and against their professed Republican values.
Team in-fighting within the group that needs to be unified more than ever and reflect what we hope for this country. Come on, Blues, do we not have the ability to hold a spectrum of diverse Democratic ideals under a wide tent? Time’s run out on a small one!
How science and facts are dismissed as fake news and a liberal agenda while our planet’s speaking the truth.
How fragile democracy can really be.
The influence that the evangelical church still has (it is wild and scary).
And, damn, is it ugly, ugly, ugly.
Wild, wild, wild.
Sad, sad, sad.
And illuminating, illuminating, illuminating.
It’s revealed what I think are three main themes that I keep circling around:
Unhealthy power always ruins. Whether it’s quick and rumbly like it is now or over a slower trajectory, unhealthy power and leadership will always wreck systems. Good people will leave or get trampled on, lies will prevail, and power will do anything to protect itself.
People are addicted to kings and self-protection. Not all people. But a helluva lot of people are willing to follow charismatic, ego-centric, power-hungry leaders when they throw God’s name in the mix and ignore literally every.single.warning.sign. It’s wild (and sad, and yes, I use both of those together a lot).
Those on the underside of power always take the brunt of all of the decisions made on top. The price is always paid first by everyone on the down side of typical power– economically, practically, educationally, health-wise, systemically–and it’s just.flat.out.wrong.
All of this is really hard to look at (and part of what Turning Over Tables is all about). It makes us cringe and rage and wrestle, but we must look at it clearly, soberly, and courageously because in the words of James Baldwin, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
While I teeter on despair some days, especially when I see rights and protections being stripped and so many on the underside of power and privilege being terrorized in different ways by this administration, I have not lost hope (+ the opening of the Obama Presidential Center helped).
This great illumination doesn’t have to lead us to despair, to paralysis, to hopelessness, to ambivalence, to hand-wringing.
It can lead us to where we’ve needed to go for a long time–toward greater honesty, humility, and advocacy for the kind of society we want for our future.
Toward the stories that never get told on the news, but we see up close and personal in our real life. Sharing stories of community care, hope, creativity, and courage remind us of what’s good, true, and beautiful (and real in a world bent on fake).
Toward each other, bravely getting off our phones and more engaged in real lives fostering authenticity, connection, and mutual support.
Toward owning our power in a democracy that comes through our votes, our voice in local issues, our speaking up and out for what we do want, not only what we don’t.
Toward our neighbors in need, sharing resources and love and light in these dark times.
Toward creativity and the need to break out of typical systems and norms that just won’t get us to new places in this current climate.
Toward owning our insanity, trying to “do the same thing over and over again, expecting the same result” and an openness to new leaders, new minds, new ideas, new practices, new possibilities.
Toward spectrum thinking and paradox-ing where there’s room for wide ranges of possibilities within our shared values and an ability to hold more &’s.
Toward cultivating little pockets of love, freedom, equity, and action instead of waiting for the big systems to create what we need for us.
Toward choosing hope, possibility, and action over despair, powerlessness, and complacency.
Toward leading courageously because so much is on the line.
Toward cultivating new ways for this new world in tangible, practical ways that change us and the space and places we live and move in.
And, for me, one of the most important–toward embodying our values with integrity and ease because no one can take those away from us!
Yeah, the great illumination is ugly, wild, sad, and terribly painful.
My hope: it’ll lead us to something better because what it’s revealed is not sustainable. It’s gotta go. It doesn’t reflect what’s good for us or the world, and it’s not what we want for our children or our future.
And in the words of Michelle Obama, “hope is a choice.”
I think it’s also an action.
May what we are seeing and experiencing lead us to something better, together.
With you from Colorado,
Next up: It’s Our Flag, Too.
PS: I always love to hear because there are so many creative ways to live out our values: What’s this great (and painful) illumination leading you (and the groups or organizations you’re part of) toward?
Also, Soul + Practice Podcast is on Summer break, but if you want to catch up, here are the episodes from this last season—so many beautiful, wise voices as we gather resourcing to make it in these wild times. Available on all major podcast platforms.
