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In a time when “bad is avalanching into worse and we are all in its path,” the Rev. Lynn Ungar provided strategies for revolution via a poem:
Disarm yourself of the need
for comfort. Go lightly
into places where you are a stranger.
Disarm yourself of loyalty
to what is normal, but false.
Pledge allegiance
to the tree outside your window,
to your neighbor’s children,
to the speed of light.
(Facebook, October 6)
Claire Curole described the news as a “firehose of catastrophe,” and wrote: “When we are too terrified, we freeze. When we are too comfortable, we relax. Somewhere in between, alert to threat but not overwhelmed by it, we are best capable of choosing and taking action.” (Sand Hill Diary, November 1)
The Rev. Ashley Horan asked, “What would happen if, instead of having to expend the emotional and physical and spiritual energy to speak truth to power, we—women and femmes and trans/nb/gnc folks and queers and people of color and immigrants and disabled folks and every other group who isn’t at the center of the white cisheteropatriarchy—were able to devote that same courage, that same yearning, that same loving energy to living into another way of being? What if we didn’t have to use all our spoons to resist and critique, but rather to reimagine and create?
“I believe—truly—that any damn thing would be possible.” (Facebook, October 4)
The Rev. Elizabeth Stevens captured the feelings of many progressives after the November midterm elections:
Oh, my dear ones.
I know you were hoping
For a once-and-done.
For an earthquake,
A tidal wave.
Hoping that if we gave it our all,
A single push would be enough.
That after this, we could
Sink
Back into complacency,
Back into the comfort of our privilege.
(Facebook, November 7)
Come back to ourselves
The Rev. Jake Morrill wrote that “we need to see and hear one another—our stories, our wounds, our quirks, our confessions—and even fall in love a little with one another. And, while we’re at it, to come back to ourselves. . . . If our hearts got stirred up like that, if we let beauty tug us out of our stupor, we could be moved to fight for what we love. Tenaciously and tenderly. Like something precious might, even at the last hour, have a chance of being saved.” (Facebook, October 25)
The Rev. Erika Hewitt reminded us that we cannot turn away from the world’s suffering: “Over and over, I’ve witnessed us rising to the occasion of fighting for our values & our vision . . . before falling back into exhaustion, or feeling guilty for the small, silly pleasures that are as vital as oxygen to our suffocating hearts. . . . I have no answers, here at the bottom of the well. All I know is that we—especially we with the most privilege, which is another way of saying The Least to Lose—can’t look away. We can’t stop resisting, or ‘spelling’ one another in turns.” (Facebook, December 15)
The Rev. Dr. Beth Johnson wrote that “there is a force more powerful being unleashed—the power of radical love, righteous rage, and evolutionary imperative—the power of our collective vision of another world and way of being of which we are midwives.
“Breathe. Rest. Pass the baton when you need to and pick it back up when you can.
“You are not in this alone. We are not in this alone.” (Facebook, October 4)
The Rev. Theresa Soto’s words were a balm for many hearts:
I need you to know
that there is nothing
wrong with you, if you
find the world congealed
and unwieldy. . . .
You are meant
for love and beauty. You belong
where you are known and
where your future is not just a
resource, but a promise, which
you begin to fulfill by being
unmistakably, irrevocably
yourself.
(Facebook, October 4)