by Margaret Ernst
Welcome. You are here following our collective because something or someone brought you into a longing and vision for a world where we all get free, together. That means everyone – across this globe. And you are not alone. However unreasonable you may be told these longings are, they are rooted in an ancient hope for wholeness.
You are here because you believe there is a way out of White Christian dominance towards a world of flourishing, truly, for all.
Often ministers are trained to share the good news – without being real about how much the bad news hurts. So let me start with naming the heartbreak.
In the last 4 years, we have gone through a pandemic in which hundreds of thousands died and all our lives were up-ended.
Our country has funded a genocide in Palestine, waking millions of people up even further to the violence of U.S. empire.
We’ve seen demands to challenge systemic racism displaced by national calls for “law and order.”
Trans and queer people have become more and more targeted by hate and contempt.
Many of us have lost abortion rights.
For too many of us, our lives are unaffordable, squeezed out of communities and barely able to get by, on a planet whose climate is changing by the day.
So many are isolated or divided from families or neighbors.
And now, like with rising far-right movements across the world, late capitalism has created a void where Trump has posed himself as the savior to people’s problems and pain.
In this land, the intense specters of white supremacy, capitalism, and Christian nationalism, are not just specters, they are alive and with us.
In a moment like this the work of collective liberation – a phrase to describe how our struggles and our liberation are intertwined – can feel at times like a fantasy, like words on a page.
It’s okay to feel like hope is far away. To deny the fear and horror of this moment for many of us – and especially for those who are most targeted, is to deny reality.
To me, faith in this moment is believing the way will unfold. Not just one way: but many ways. There is soul work to do. There is organizing work to do. There is mutual care. Concrete action.
Inside of all it, please make space for the sacred holding of the sacredness that is you. Many of us are experiencing feelings of loss that are not only from the election cycle, but from a year of witnessing genocide, of ongoing loss from the pandemic. Loss of communities that may have held you, or deaths of family or friends, and countless other kinds of loss.
Whenever and how you find ways to make space for feelings of grief and anger, I encourage you to find space for connection. Who are the people and what are the practices that love and hold you? Rest in their arms, or their voice, or their song.
As we carry and find spaces to hold all of these layers of pain, may we be transformed by this moment to not repeat strategies of the past that have failed us in fighting white supremacy, capitalism, Christian nationalism, and empire. May we find words to speak the truths that need to be spoken, and to listen deeply to others. Our solidarity expands, and expands, across this whole globe.
May you find hedges of protection, courage, and care around yourself today and in these coming days, flowing from the source of protection that is the source of justice, all hope, and the beauty of all creation.