As I stepped onto the stage at a late October Vote Common Good tour stop event in central Texas, our boisterous, cannon-throated Musical Director, the Reverend Vince Anderson, ripped into a raucous version of Johnny Cash’s 1996 version of, I’ve Been Everywhere. I laughed at first, but soon realized it was about as perfect a synopsis of my year as I could have written. It sure feels like I’ve been everywhere during this trip around the sun.
I’ve spent the past twelve months wedged into the elementary school-sized chairs of cramped commuter jets; careening inside grimy, outdated rock band tour buses; and dropped into a seemingly endless procession of now indistinct Uber rides. My work writing and talking about the intersection of faith and politics, has carried me into every disparate corner of this country: from the green-blanketed mountains of North Georgia, to the buttoned-up high churches of Western Kentucky, to the pumpkin-spiced hipster refuges of Portland, Oregon.
As the guest of progressive faith communities and women’s political groups and community activists and humanist conferences and interfaith worship services, I’ve certainly been doing some speaking, but mostly I’ve been listening and watching; taking note of people’s words and their countenance and their poorly concealed tears. Like a front line correspondent in the uncivil war we’ve all been entrenched in, I’ve kept my eyes and ears open, and I’ve come to realize that something’s going on here—and it isn’t what we think.
The real war isn’t the one we think we’re waging. This isn’t about politics and it isn’t about the President. It’s not about Senate seats or legislative battles or election results. Sure, those are all helpful, tangible ways to quantify the inner turmoil and to wrap our minds around the daily national shitstorm we currently find ourselves in—but the truth is far deeper and much more formidable than all that. This is bedrock human stuff; it is the elemental truths of this life that we’re all trying to reckon with right now.
2018 has been one long decade.
If I could sum up the past twelve months in a single word, it would be fatigue. Most of us aren’t as much sprinting to the finish line, as we are being dragged across it. We’re exhausted from the big and the distant stresses: from waking up every day for 365 days and pushing back against predatory politicians and toxic systems and corrupt legislation and human rights atrocities and Presidential Tweet tantrums and acts of treason. (Yes, that kind of sustained urgency will wear you out if your heart is working and your mind is right.)
But we’re tired from doing something else too, something far more personal. We’re all inventorying the relational collateral damage of these days: the fractures we feel in our families, the divisions we see in our social circles, the ugliness we’ve witnessed on our timelines—in our neighbors and church friends, and in ourselves.
Many of us were hoping that the recent midterm elections would be a magic elixir for every malady, though that of course didn’t turn out to be the case. Regardless of whether or not the individual political outcomes were in our favor, none of the deepest wounds have been healed and none of the most venomous animosity alleviated. In fact, things are getting (and will likely get) much worse, as those who feel as though they have lost something, dig in their heels once more. As we approach the promise of more national, interpersonal, and existential upheaval this coming year, the question for each of us, whatever our religious tradition or political affiliation is, ‘What is the way forward?” As someone who’s been everywhere, here are some thoughts.
Be a story-learner. People cannot and should not be caricatured, as much as we’d like to, and as often as we attempt to. You’re going to need to extend the invitation to someone you think we know, someone you’ve decided you understand from a distance. Proximity is always a better teacher. When you sit across from someone and actually listen to them, you’ll realize how rich and complex and like your own, their stories are. You may not end up liking them better afterward or agree with them any more, you’ll just know them more.
Clean your house. These days haven’t just exposed America’s internal junk, they’ve probably shown you the worst of who you are; in incendiary family gatherings and social media jousts and simply the knee-jerk hatred you feel toward strangers. It will be important over the coming year for you to reconnect with your source; with the spiritual and moral truths you believe are nonnegotiable—and to hold them up like a mirror and ask yourself if you’re being led by those values. Are you really who you say you want to be?
Lead with compassion. You’re hurting right now. We all are. Every person you pass by or order coffee from our work alongside or sit down to dinner with at night is feeling the weight of all that they to contend with; family dysfunction, financial worries, physical illness, marital struggles, the voice in their heads that tells them they’re not good enough or successful enough or thin enough or something enough. In light of this reality, the greatest act we can perform in making a better way forward, is to move with empathy. To put it plainly—try not to be a jerk.
Keep giving a damn. It can be easy to let the collateral damage of how much your heart and your body have endured pushing back against the enmity around you this year, prevent you from doing it anymore. But as the calendar changes, the world is going to need people like you more than ever; it will need the compassionate, open-hearted damn-givers to resist with even greater force. So don’t even think about retiring that heart of yours. Rest it and wield it like the beautiful weapon against hatred that it is.
This week, I’ll be unpacking my suitcase for the last time in 2018. And as I greet the coming year, those many miles traversed and the hours logged and the stories I’ve been told will be here with me. I hope they’ve given me wisdom walking into the uncertain days ahead. I hope I’ll be different. I hope I’ve learned something.
America, we’ve been everywhere, man. We’ve crammed a decade of heartache into these past twelve months, ten years of bitter battles into this calendar’s confines, a lifetime of urgency into just 365 days—and we’ve earned a rest.
Here’s hoping 2019 is kinder, more loving, and a feels a whole lot shorter.
Get John’s book, ‘HOPE AND OTHER SUPERPOWERS’ here!
