Friend:

I like weird titles, always have. This one makes zero sense, except that we are in gritty times, lemons are bright and fun to look at, and not a whole lot makes sense. Why not encapsulate that in a title?

Rest assured, I will (hopefully) begin to make more sense now.

It’s a gorgeous morning after a rain washed the pollen off things last night. I wish it had washed me! Last night, walking, the wind whipped the pollen into my throat, my eyes, and everything has been gritty since. Honestly though, I was already gritty in my spirit…

I’ve felt a hesitance to write out my thoughts today because of all the need for good news and positive outlooks in the middle of darker times. I’ve been so glad for the people highlighting the beauty of the human spirit — the ones coming up with clever ways to lift our spirits. I’d rather focus on these silver linings any day, but I’ve found there are times when the human spirit needs to engage with the darker side of our thoughts. You know, when something is wrong and some people talk too much of it, and others too little? We all try to make up the part we see necessary in a drama around us, but sometimes we need to simply respond in the way we need to respond, regardless of whether it will “balance” out anyone else.

I tend to see the good in things, which isn’t at all bad, but when our spirits are weighed down it doesn’t help to heap feathery thoughts on top of the weight and think that now we can also be light as a feather. The weight is still there.

This is where I found myself earlier this week, when not even John Krasinski could make me feel better. I didn’t need good news, I needed to engage with the weight of an anger building with in. Anger that included questions, doubts, some judgement, and my own fears.

"You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be." -Admiral Stockdale

The first drafts of what I wrote were dark, furious mutterings that needed to be said so I could get through to hope. It is a truth which I have begun to universally acknowledge — sometimes we have to willing to let the sludge out at the beginning of the dam so the fresher water can start to flow. Thankfully, I didn’t publish those first drafts.

What remains are my calmer ruminations of the questions and observations which caused the damn [sic] in the first place. Really, I just wrote them down with no particular organization, so please just pretend this is a letter from me to you.

LAY DOWN THE SUPERHERO CAPE

There is this idea that we have to be superhuman when it comes to fear. We should be able to have the fears of the world dumped on us and still be ok. I’ve struggled with this during the pandemic. I should be able to hear everyone’s conspiracy theory, soothe any emotion, calm any fear, and do it all while being calm and unafraid myself.

It’s a setup. No one human was meant to carry the weight of the world, and I say this having tried to do it myself in the past and knowing that some of you are doing it right now. No one can bear that much fear without drowning. We have to have the bravery to lay down the superhero cape and be human about this — deciding who gets to speak into our hearts and minds is an essential adult decision. People who aren’t able to say no are usually miserable — especially during this time I think a lot of people are miserable because they don’t know how to say no to taking in everything.

• No to the news

• No to over consumption of social media

• No to staying glued to data

It’s important to make choices for things that we can do or affect:

• routine

• projects and hobbies

• reading

• movies

• exercise

I mean, I get it. When you feel like the world is going to hell in a hand basket what’s the use of living normal life? Here’s what I believe: in dark times we need to prioritize living more than usual. Building up our minds, exercising our bodies, trying new things, learning new things, clipping toe nails… you know, all that normal stuff. It’s a human tendency to feel like we should stop living during something tough, but the truth is we need all the little things extra much over hard times. This doesn’t just apply to a pandemic, it applies to the less global seasons of hardship when it’s just us personally going through something.

We cannot feed fear and neglect living and expect to stay healthy. Seriously, please say no to a steady diet of pandemic, or whatever is hard, and discipline your mind to think of life. It’s 100% worth it to distance from fear.

It takes real courage to step aside from fear, but we can do it. Replace it with thoughts of life. I promise you’ll begin to feel happier and healthier.

I can hear someone saying, wait, aren’t you voiding your own point in the beginning of engaging with darker topics? No, I’m saying that the pandemic is not normal, and therefore we have to pay some attention to thinking about it, each to his own ability, and then lay it aside and get on with the business of living.

The pandemic will pass. They always do. Afterward we pick up threads of a changed life, because the only unchanging thing is that we will change as humanity, and keep going.

“To escape into light is no better than to continually rummage in darkness. Both light and dark are needed.

-Neil Douglas-Klotz, The Hidden Gospel

I DO NOT THINK PANDEMIC MEANS WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS

It made me so happy and unhappy earlier this week to learn there’s emerging data to indicate the whole COVID thing started months before we thought, meaning we may have got the curve all wrong because we got the timing wrong, which means our data wouldn’t mean the things we think it means. We may have been handling this whole virus thing back before we knew it was a whole thing. Isn’t that funny? Humans can apparently fight illness even if the world or government, or even ourselves, don’t know it.

It’s both a depressing and hopeful thought. Depressing because of the catastrophic effects on things like the global economy, careers, and healthcare, perhaps unnecessary on such a large scale. Hopeful, because… as I mentioned. We might have already worked our way through hundreds of thousands of cases that were never tested, and recovered. Here’s an interesting thread to consider, as well as a post by a friend of mine on FB. She has given me permission to post this:

Isn’t this so interesting?

PICK THE CAPE BACK UP NOW

So. What if this is correct and we just had a bunch of leaders lose their minds and change the shape of our world? One thing I keep thinking of over and over again is the fact that we didn’t know the threat of the virus at first, and if I had the weight of the world on my shoulders I might, would have erred on the side of caution too. We really can’t accurately predict things with insufficient data, especially if say, we’re politicians or media trying to do a medical professional’s job (yes, slight sarcasm there). I believe we should have grace for our leaders. They were making judgement calls on insufficient data, and still are.

The truth is though, this world has always called for the individual to exercise their mind, and not to trust everything to one, unchecked power. It’s why in any crisis, or any normal time, it’s just a terrible waste to lay down our mind, not to mention a realllyyyy bad idea.

We have to continue to think critically. Times of upheaval are a convenient time for freedom snatchers come around and do things to people that prove atrocious. Honestly though, it starts as more of an erosion of freedom than any actual snatching. Remember the Germans who simply sang louder in church as the trains filled with Jews passed by? It’s so, so easy to rationalize away the smaller things we see, until they become too big to stop.

This is why I was outraged to see a form in my neighboring county encouraging, nay, giving opportunity, to citizens to report one another for a stay-at-home order which, while it may have been helpful, is also unconstitutional. This indicates the unwisest kind of leadership, not someone you can trust. At all.

I can trust leaders who ask me to stay at home for awhile, but I cannot trust them once this sort of control surfaces.

Taken in tandem with the kind of egregious human error of taking Italian hospital footage and claiming it as our own, should raise the question of a culture so bent on continuing a certain kind of narrative, that some underling patched in footage that was false. We have to, have to be willing to let the story take shape according to facts, and not try to shape the story for what we want people to do or think.

If the data was not matching expectations, let’s admit it! When we try to control the story or make it do what we think it should do, we end up with the kind of story no one can trust anymore. We have to be truthful in order to be trustworthy. It works that way in everything from small, white lies to huge cover-ups. It’s all the same root, people trying to control how other people read the story because something about the story will change how the public thinks.

I don’t measure bad leadership by mistake or human failure. I measure it by whether or not they find it necessary to control the narrative. What denotes a bad leader to me is someone who is willing to lie, cover something up, or silence certain facts or people who see anomalies in the script they’re given. Someone who cares more about being right, than finding the truth.

I was deeply troubled when the stay-at-home orders hit. Ok, I wasn’t troubled right away, it was when I saw the shape of people’s responses change. Most everyone I talked to was willing to honor the people around us, but something shifted right around that time and we just could not do enough anymore.

I remember that feeling from getting dressed years and years ago. It just wasn’t possible to dress well enough to protect the guys around me from lust. If I followed all the rules exactly it might be ok, but if a girl got sexually assaulted it didn’t protect her anyway, because the first question everyone had was always, “well, what was she wearing, or doing?”

There was a sort of control there that was never satisfied. Nothing was ever enough, and the feeling during this shelter-at-home has become eerily similar. For awhile now it’s been restriction heaped on restriction limiting autonomy, which also feels familiar.

I began to think of things side by side:

• Back then it was not ok to doubt i.e. question higher powers. Definitely feels that way now.

• Manipulation was exercised through what was to be the greater good for selective groups, not for everyone. Hmmmm.

• One night my friends and I discussed whether we could walk to socialize, or sit in a backyard to socialize. It felt just like the old days of arguing about whether or not we could wear a black head covering, or white head covering. Little details with huge significance attached.

It isn’t even so much about individuals or details, as it is a culture or spirit that pervades the people when leaders are controlling. I don’t even think it’s a conscious thing, and doesn’t seem to really show up until you see things like encouraging people to “spy” on one another. It’s really tricky, because it uses a good thing, our desire to respect others, and uses it for control.

Once we begin to leverage relationships to get the people to do what we want, the virus looks like a smaller threat than creating power inequalities between leaders and people. As a child I lived in a culture where the community ‘force’ (which we recognized as a spiritual duty) was used to shame people into wearing the right clothes and living the “right” lifestyle. We shamed them right into the arms of abuse predators: sexual, emotional, spiritual, mental, and sometimes physical. ** Something about this abuse of authority always creates environments where abuse thrives.

**By we, I mean a systemic culture, not individual persons.

We have to have the courage to call out when things don’t make sense, and ask the hard questions, because while it’s really not a big deal that I can’t go to a concert for awhile, it is a big deal when the same movement prompts me to tattle on my neighbors. It’s a flag of crimson. We all have to give things up sometimes, but free speech and mobility, questions and critical thinking are not part of those things. If these things are beginning to take a hit, we must shake ourselves from our silver linings and have the courage to stand.

It’s a tricky line, isn’t it? Societies abide by laws, and if I was seen murdering someone I would expect that to be reported. The lines of freedom are hard to discern at times, because as someone else pointed out, the right kind of laws bring freedom. Life is a funny balance between knowing when to follow orders, and when to forsake them.

The right kind of laws do not bring mistrust and silence, but are found in the evidence of liberty, not by making safety the gold standard.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor safety.” -Benjamin Franklin

Does this mean I am encouraging you to go out and flaunt the current orders? By no means! It means that I encourage you, as I encourage myself, to be bold in the pursuit of truth. To think things through for ourselves, and not because we hold too high a premium on safety. Powers and values imbalanced often tip the world upside down.

I am personally encouraged to see the amount of tension that exists. Conflict is an indication that there is function left, there is courage left, and there is something for which we can stand. Friction indicates movement, and though some conflict is poisonous, it is usually when we don’t stand for truth.

THAT’S MY SECRET, I’M ALWAYS ANGRY

I imagine we’ve all been on our own roller coaster, more or less according to our personalities and ways of taking things. It’s hard to know what to think when a situation is dire in some spots, and then barely reaching others. It’s the danger of going strictly by anecdotal evidence, I suppose. What may be true for one may barely affect the next, as it is with the asymptomatic next to the gravely ill. The person who still has work next to the person who lost their job. We have to be sensitive to sorrow.

Some people will understand it through different lenses, as a friend of mine suggested, which is worth having a little patience with — the viewpoints of our neighbors and social media feeds are worth considering. They may help to round out our own perspective, or tell us something we didn’t know.

In this time some will find it more worthwhile to focus on healthcare and direct relief efforts, some on reading and interpreting data, some on calling leaders to accountability, some on the economy, some on encouraging people to practice love with a sound mind. All are good gifts to each other.

To me this isn’t about blame, the virus, or the fact that not everything adds up the same in all places. We can criticize or defend until the cows come home, and there are things we just won’t know until after it’s over and done. There are people dying and I’m sorry for it. We ought to grieve this, because it’s not good. I can’t lightly gloss over something that causes death.

Neither can I stay silent when I see decisions being made to side with death. Death of free speech, death of common sense and logic, death of personal autonomy. There are more kinds of death than a physical one, and if these were to die in my country it would be way more catastrophic than anything the COVID-19 virus can do.

It’s just weird, you know? This balancing of risks.

I have responded in two ways: calmness, and then a surprising anger — surprising to me anyway. The first one pleased me, the second one didn’t. I didn’t know what to do with my anger. Was it even righteous? What was at the heart of this anger? I wrestled with the question of whether my anger was just for a night and a day, or if there was ever any call for anger, when I remembered Jesus.

“what have you done to my house, you have made it into a den of thieves!”

Cue flipping everything upside down.

I’m not Jesus, but if the Son of God gets angry over perversions of truth, I’m pretty sure there are places for anger in our world. Thinking about it, it fascinated me that anger can be righteous, but fear cannot. And yet, so many of us flip those, and feel justified in feeling fear but not anger.

Thinking through it with this new perspective, I saw a beauty the world knows so little of — a beauty which happens when love gets angry. Justice follows, hope springs new, and life is restored. As I quoted in the last post:

Last night as I was winding down to go to sleep I got a sensation I always have difficulty describing. It’s as if God draws especially, personally and specifically near to me. As if he’s my dad showing me something really cool and special, he puts his arm around me, and it makes me feel warm and happy and ok.

I saw that he really loves our world. Really loves it. Sometimes I forget he made it, and he’s got more skin in the game than any of us in restoring it. He’s God so he could’ve already done it by burning it and starting over. For a God who has the capability to create worlds, I sure don’t see why he’s stuck it out with this one, and there can be only one reason to do something like this: love.

If we are angry, and sin not, we have the potential to be warriors in a world that is being restored to love. I began to see this burning within me, the passion for good leadership and critical thinking, as a gift of love from God to help in the restoration process. I do have a voice, and I can use it to awaken as I have been awakened.

I didn’t use to care about pretty much anything. I was passive, mostly uncaring, and wouldn’t have stood for anything if it meant a possible fall. If it meant conflict, I was out, but I have begun to see how the conflict in this world is indication of something much better coming. When we have a generation of revolutionaries who are willing to fall so that others may stand, we are on the cusp of a new freedom. A new resurrection. It is the way of the Gospel.

God is not a God of anger, he is a God of love, but sometimes he grows angry when he sees the suffering inflicted by a dark power of control, a prowling adversary. I don’t believe God “sent” this virus to judge us, but I do believe that he is always working toward our good, even when the evil around us means his mercies appear severe. There is evil afoot in this world, the greatest unpleasantness of them all, but good is greater. God is good, and God is love, and good is going to win.

Let us take courage. Fear is full of its old tricks of pandemic and crashes and war, but good always prevails. Springtime and harvest returns. God’s word endures forever and can outlast any old virus or human mistake. Fear will put us in a place where nothing is ever enough, but love satisfies and fills us.

We stand for love.

Amen.

-L.Raine