We need to be together
Next gathering this Thursday, April 17, “Action, Contemplation, and Resilience” with Josh and Chris
When: 6:30pm Happy Hour, 7-8:30pm Conversation
Where: Port 393, Holland, MI
Forgive me if this sounds self-serving, but we need to be together. We need to process our thoughts and feelings together. We need hugs and laughter and tears and hands intertwined and smiles and knowing glances and nodding heads and silly comments and serious comments and fear and sadness and defiance and hope. We need to have moments together where we let down our guard and admit that we are scared or angry or numb or resolved or bewildered, where we listen to the ways that our fear and confusion is shared by others.
We have entered into an era that will define our country, and to some extent, the world, for decades to come. There is no normal to return to. In a sense, whatever the United States has been is over. The norms and institutions did not hold. I don’t know how far the MAGA movement is willing to go to assert its will on the country. No one knows. But the leaders of the MAGA movement have disappeared innocent individuals, without giving them due process (no trial, no evidence), to a prison in El Salvador, a prison which has no mattresses and never allows individuals to go outdoors. They have defied the Supreme Court; they have defiled our country.
We have to learn how to live in this new, more chaotic world. Many of us are also dramatically rethinking our religious/spiritual worldview. It’s a lot. We need support. Still Processing can be a place where we get intellectual and emotional support from community members, authors, experts, professors, activists, journalists, filmmakers, etc. We want to be an organization that has a reputation for kindness and courage, for curiosity and moral clarity. This has been and will be a fine line to walk. I’m sure we have made and will continue to make mistakes. But at least we are doing the work that needs to be done. We must be insistent about living in reality. We can’t give up on truth and goodness.
The world is what we make it. This is as clear to me as it has ever been. So let’s work together to make this world more free, more kind, more just, more loving, more curious, more inclusive, more beautiful. I know that sounds naive. That’s because we are up against a movement that celebrates, or tolerates, domination and cruelty, as long as that domination and cruelty is inflicted upon human beings that the MAGA movement has deemed disposable. And it must be said that the MAGA movement is a Christian movement, and it always has been, as was the Nazi movement, as was the Confederacy, as was the Jim Crow South, as was the opposition to Civil Rights, as is the opposition to LGBTQ+ rights, as is the opposition to the feminist movement, as is the opposition to climate care, as is the opposition to immigrants and refugees, as is the opposition to higher learning. I could go on. This is a reality that we also must face.
Chris and I will have a conversation about these hard things with you this Thursday. It will be heavy, but it will also be hopeful, and we may even laugh a little (or a lot). I hope to see you there.