“Don’t ask what the world needs”, Howard Thurman (author, Christian mystic, civil rights leader, mentor to Martin Luther King, 1899-1981) famously wrote; “Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who come alive.”
Coming alive is an extremely heavy lift these days as so many of us are weighed down, if not emotionally and spiritually flattened, by what we read, see and feel. The cruelty, chaos, corruption, incompetence, and venality blasting out from the Trump administration is enervating, if not deadening. Which is exactly the point that the daily barrage of executive orders, funding cutbacks, firings, put-downs and all the rest, are designed to do. If we become psychically immobile or are rendered half-alive, the march toward totalitarianism meets with less resistance.
Coming alive is a form of resistance. We each need to find our own unique pathway to coming alive, but for all of us two dimensions need to be included: the inner practices and the outer witness.The inner practices involve what we know but are not always able to engage: rest, recreation, paying attention to diet. And I would add prayer, meditation, silence, fasting from media – disciplines that enable us to reconnect with the soul, which is where our life source resides and which can always be discovered, re-discovered, and set free. As Thomas Merton wrote, who to my mind is the most important Christian spiritual writer of the 20th century, “you can’t give your heart (which emerges from the soul) to someone if it is not in your possession.” Consistent inner practices enable us to find our heart, nurture it, and give a portion of it to some part of the world – be it family, community, school, neighborhood — that needs it.
The outer witness is perhaps more complicated. So many people tell me that they don’t know what to do in the wake of what appears to be systematic de-democratization. It is all so overwhelming. Where does one start? Instead of looking at it all, start with a patch. Your patch, and imagine that it will be stitched to a larger quilt. A quilt of witness, a patchwork of people coming alive to offer hope and justice, peace and mercy. I am grateful for the patch of investigative journalism, which exposes the lies and mismanagement that occurs regularly. I am grateful for the patch of those judges who are holding the line on the rule of law by declaring various executive orders to be illegal. I am grateful for the patches of those who are standing up for – and standing with – those who are threatened with deportation without due process, or being fired for daring to challenge unjust practices. Their witness helps me come alive.
In addition to reinvigorating my inner practices, I am working on two outer patches that have long been part of my life, and are emerging with greater clarity. The first is to expose the connection between some of our national leaders with a particular expression of Christian faith. Attorney General Pam Bondi is a self-proclaimed Christian who has written articles with Paula White, a White House spiritual advisor. Both have some connection with the growing New Apostolic Reformation, a confederation of Christian churches across the country and around the world which advocate for Christian domination and is committed to spiritual warfare for the purpose of establishing authority over “seven mountains”: education, religion, family, government, media, business, and the arts.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is on record for recommending that women be deprived of the right to vote, a position that some NAR leaders claim is a direct interpretation of St. Paul’s writings: “wives be subject to your husbands” (Ephesians 5:22). There may be connections between other members of the Cabinet and the NAR; these are the ones I know about.
And while not particularly vocal about his faith practice, President Trump recognizes the support and benefit he receives by aligning himself with the NAR. It has become a two-way street, and we all need to know more about it, because many of the policies and actions from much of the Trump Administration appear to come directly from a Christian perspective that many people don’t recognize, including, I suspect, from many of its adherents.
The other patch I am working on is healing. We are hearing, most of us with great alarm, how so many medical achievements and safeguards for people’s health, particularly the well-being of children, are being dismissed and dismantled. I am grateful for the patch of the many medical professionals who resist this onslaught, but the patch I’m talking about is a bit different. It involves spiritual healing, which will engage some sort of public witness that addresses that which has been broken – our relationships across religious and political difference – and committing to offer space where a patch of healing can be established – by naming the pain and trauma — and then stitching it onto the growing quilt of hope.
I close with a blessing that I have been using for twenty years, written by the late Rev. William Sloane Coffin: ”May God give us the grace to never sell ourselves short; grace to risk something big for something good; grace to remember that the world is too dangerous now for anything but truth, and too small for anything but love.”
Our aliveness — and our love — is never too small. Find yours, and stitch it onto to the growing quilt of hope. It can make a difference.
