As a mother, a Christian, an organizer/activist, descendant of genocide survivors, and resident of these disunited states, I am heartbroken by a lot right now – how bad things are for so many and how much worse they may well get. Heartbroken over the specter of war, ongoing genocide, and so much death and killing, climate chaos, extreme storms and the havoc they’re wreaking on lives and livelihoods, poverty and inequality, increasing attacks on immigrants and trans youth, emboldened white supremacists and misogynists. I’m heartbroken over the ways that Christianity – and the Bible that I love so very much – has been distorted and used in violent and idolatrous ways, in the lead up to the election and how it’s poised as a wrecking ball pushing “Project 2025” and forms of religious and racial nationalism as the nation moves forward (or perhaps really backwards).
Over the past few days amongst movement leaders and impacted communities, I have been hearing calls to be grounded, to make sense of the moment, and to push ahead. But in the midst of all this, I’ve been wondering if shaking up (not really grounding at all) is actually helpful. Being heartbroken and uncomfortable and shaken up and shaking things up may well be an appropriate response to this moment (both the election outcome and what’s going on around us surrounding this election). As a Christian, I am aware that shaking things up, being unsettled and unsettling was the way that Jesus’ and his disciples moved through the world. Or what freedom fighters and prophets of justice through the ages have done – when things seem at their worst.
Shaking things up and being shaken up sounds like what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was prescribing as needed when he and others suggested uniting and organizing those at the bottom of our society to become “a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life.” This shake up, this transformation is all the more urgent today – when there are 140 million people who are poor and low-income, 40% of the US population, and 60% reports living paycheck to paycheck, without affordable health care, decent homes or quality education.
Let us be wary of platitudes about unity and harmony and healing in this moment – at least a healing that glosses over profound suffering that people across race, geography, gender and partisan lines are facing. Let us be suspicious about covering deep social and economic wounds with band-aids and saying it will be just fine, it’s not so bad like the prophet Jeremiah admonishes. Because it’s not just fine, for a lot of people and many are in fear that it’s getting worse.
But what I’ve learned from poor and dispossessed families in these yet to be United States, is that those looked over, left out or locked up who have no choice but to survive and organize are the source of hope for the nation in this moment. Such impacted leaders have always been the source of hope for transformative change.
In his autobiography “The Long Haul”, Myles Horton, cofounder of the Highlander Folk School, a training ground for the industrial union movement and Black freedom struggle, wrote about the drive away from democracy and toward authoritarianism and deeper social ruptures, “If people are in trouble, if people are suffering and exploited and want to get out from under the heel of oppression, if they have hope that it can be done, if they can see a path that leads to a solution, a path that makes sense, and is consistent with their beliefs and their experience, then they’ll move…If they don’t have hope, they don’t even look for a pass. They look for somebody else to do it for them.”
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. Let us move with the hope that it doesn’t have to be this way, this is not as good as it gets.
On Wednesday night, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City I prayed this prayer for my city and nation. I invite others to pray it with me now:
God of righteousness, truth, love and life. We come to you today in search of justice, love, and healing.
You have told us to do what is right. To rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. To do no wrong or violence to the other, the women or the children.
To sow peace not discord or division and to organize society around the needs of the least of these who are most of us.
Almighty God, we come to you many of us in fear and trembling and commit and recommit to bringing your reign of everybody in, nobody out to this city and nation.
We remember your commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves, to welcome the immigrant refugee, to release those captive to racism and injustice, to cancel debts, and bring good news – not the bad news of exclusion, division, transphobia, climate chaos, poverty and low wages – to those made poor by systems and structures.
Kaleidoscope God, you teach us that love tramples hate. That truth trounces lies. That community conquers fear. And life overcomes death and despair. You teach us that hope comes in the mourning. Make us, mold us, hold us and send us into the city and world to restore the streets to live in, make the community livable again.
This is my prayer today and everyday. Amen. And Amen.