What Now? From Despair to Resolute Hope

LIke many people, the news of Donald Trump’s election left me with an overwhelming sense of disbelief and despair. And then I was angry. All these feelings required time to process and come to terms with. These feelings required much prayer and a lot of sitting in silence. And now, with the upcoming inauguration, I am in a place of resolute hope. I have a personal plan for how I intend to navigate the coming days and years. Yes, years, because working for justice and Shalom are projects that will not be finished in my lifetime. What we need, or at least what I need, is a resolute hope.

This is a post that explains how I plan to live in resolute hope in these coming days, weeks, and years. My goal here is that what I write will be, in a small way, helpful to you. Please note, I am not an expert. This is simply what I plan on doing. This is not a prescription of what anyone else must do. These are not seven easy steps to save democracy. If something here is helpful, I’m glad. If it’s not, please ignore it. Each of us needs to figure out how we move from despair and anger, past survival and into resolute hope, justice, and joy. Strategies and practices that work for one person, may not work for another. However, if we share what we find helpful, together we can find our way forward. We are not the first people to be in difficult and dangerous times. This means we have the example of how others worked for justice and preserved their personal values and well-being. History, and the lives of faithful ancestors can help us navigate the present.

For me, resolute hope is grounded in and emerges from my Christian faith. The most important thing for me to do is to be regularly and intentionally centering and recentering myself on God. I need to be sure I am focused on what God calls us to do and to be, agents of reconciliation and love. People who strive for justice and the flourishing of all people. Part of this means I need to resist things (policies, legislation, actions) that oppose God’s will as it is revealed through Jesus.

In my life, this centering involves the regular practice of morning and evening prayer, regular reading of the Bible, and a time of silence. Personally I use the Book of Common Worship, Daily Prayer¹ as my guide. You may prefer to find a daily email or a daily prayer app. I also meet monthly with a group focused on spiritual formation and meet individually with a spiritual director.

Discover what works for you. Don’t feel guilty or inadequate about what you are doing or not doing. There were times in my life when any sort of regular spiritual practices were not possible. God meets us where we are. God’s love for us is not dependent on the spiritual practices we do. Author Anne Lamott has pointed out there are really only three prayers, “Help”, “Thanks”, and “Wow”. If “help” is all you can manage right now, that is enough.

For Christians, spiritual self care is vital². There are other forms of self care that we should attend to as well, exercise, healthy relationships, and our mental and emotional well being. I have a routine of exercise, social and family relationships, and activities that are part of my self care and I hope you do also. I encourage you to find what fits and is possible in your life right now.

Intentional, regular self care, whatever it looks like for you, is important. It may take a few tries to discover what works best for you. I know it took me a while. What was helpful for me in my 20’s didn’t work well in my 40s. As my life changed, what I had the capacity to do changed and what I needed to do changed.

In these next years though, we will need to do more than self care. There will be actions that we will be called to do. We will need to act in and with resolute hope.

The world is a big and complicated place. It can feel overwhelming to try to keep on top of every single thing. I can’t. Not without feeling overwhelmed and hopeless. At the same time, I don’t want to ignore real threats to people and the creation. I also know, there is not much – if anything- that I can individually, directly fix. For me, that can be the most discouraging part of all this. Like lots of folks, I would like to fix things for us. If I can’t save us, my next thought is to look for someone else to save us.

But as Marc Elias of Democracy Docket writes, “We are on our own.”³ This is a good reminder, particularly for Christians. While Mr Elias was not writing theologically, there is a theological reminder here for us. Christians should not be looking for a savior. We should not be waiting for God’s anointed to come rescue us. He has already come and he is Jesus. But even Jesus didn’t and doesn’t swoop in, wave his divine hands around and make everything perfect. That’s just not how Jesus does things. Over and over in the Bible, both Old Testament and New, God works with and through people. Jesus has much to say about how we are to live together and how we are to work for a just world. What we do, and how we do it matter tremendously. We begin to learn what to do and how to do it by grounding ourselves in the life of Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount and Matthew 25: 31-46⁴ are two places to begin. We must regularly check in with ourselves and with each other to be sure we are conforming ourselves to Jesus’ way and not deforming Jesus’ way to suit ourselves.

St Teresa of Avila wrote:

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours

Based on Trump’s last administration, we can anticipate feeling as if we are drinking from, maybe even drowning in a fire hose of misinformation, disinformation and outright lies over the next years. It will feel overwhelming and disheartening. And that may be part of the point. Overwhelmed and disheartened people, disengage and give up. We may want to stop following the news. We may be more susceptible to rumors and conspiracy theories. It may be hard to recognize when something good has happened. We will need resolute hope.

I don’t have a foolproof plan for navigating the torrent of words and memes and social media posts that will come our way. I’m going to try to separate out, as best as I am able, what needs to be taken seriously and what is just there to create distraction and rage. I don’t think this will be easy. I will need to be wise and not succumb to rage bait and hysteria. I will need to be thoughtful and careful about what I post and repost on social media and what I say to people. I also know, I am not required to respond to everything I see, hear or read. I can take breaks when I need to.

Based on Trump’s last administration and what he and his allies are saying, we can expect real attempts at causing serious harm to people and the environment over the next years. Again, it will be overwhelming, the attacks on the LGBTQ community, people of color, women, children, the poor, health care, food security, climate change, social safety nets, Veterans benefits, Social Security, and on and on and on. It’s too much for one person to keep track of, let alone try to stop. The temptation to live in perpetual rage or to disengage and look away from the threats is real.

What can people of faith do? What can I do? What can you do? How do we respond? I’ve decided that I will pay close attention to two issues that are close to my heart. Personally, I will stay informed about Christian Nationalism and do what I can to expose it and stop its spread. I will stay informed about the safety, civil liberties and wellbeing of the LGBTQ community and work to support and advocate with them.

I will also keep an eye on all the other issues by following some trusted individuals and organizations that can alert me when I need to take some specific action, such as writing letters, signing petitions, and showing up at marches or events. I have found some organizations and individuals I can trust to do the necessary investigative work and to suggest actions.

My suggestion to you is that you, also, pick one, two or three concerns to follow closely and find some organizations to help you stay in the loop about everything else. If we all consistently work for justice in a few areas, I think we can cover all the bases. We can’t individually do it all. We will need each other. We will need to trust each other to be aware and watching and involved. Resolute hope emerges from the ground up. Resolute hope emerges from us, the people and moves upward and outward.

One serious danger, as we live through these coming years is that we become acclimated to the harmful language that we are hearing- language that belittles, demeans, dehumanizes, and mocks others. If we are not careful we too, can begin using language that name calls, belittles, mocks those with whom we disagree is harmful to ourselves. It can be a short step from what we say to how we act. It is all too easy to excuse ourselves, “Everybody does…” “They started it first”. “We have to fight fire with fire”. It may feel satisfying, but this is dangerous⁵. Using language that dehumanizes, and demeans others, can lead us to forget that those we oppose are human beings who are loved by God. This is the challenge for Christians, to love our enemies, and pray for them, while opposing their harmful actions. I think this is very difficult. This is why spiritual self care, as individuals and as communities, is so vital.

So this is my plan. I hope some part of it is helpful to you. I know it feels like a lot right now. And it is a lot. And things are scary and the future is uncertain. But we also know what to do. We follow Jesus. We act like Jesus. We live like Jesus. In Resolute Hope, grounded and rooted in Jesus, sustained in community, faithfully living in the coming days.

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One Christian resource I would recommend is the book⁶ Sacred Resistance: A Practical Guide to Christian Witness and Dissent by Ginger Gaines-Cirelli. It was published in 2018, in the middle of the first Trump administration. Rev Gaines-Cirelli is the senior pastor of Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington DC.

1. The Book of Common Worship, Daily Prayer, is the PCUSA version of daily prayer. There are many available from other traditions. For me, these consistent written prayers help keep me focused outward, and keep my prayers from becoming too self centered. ↩︎
2. You’ll notice I didn’t mention church attendance. Regularly attending worship is important to me. However I recognize that many, many people have been hurt and traumatized the organized religion. So again, do what is best for you. God understands. You will also notice I am not presuming to tell people of other faiths what they should do. ↩︎
3. https://www.democracydocket.com/opinion/we-are-on-our-own/ you can learn more about Democracy Docket, here. ↩︎
4. You can read the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5,6,7 here. You can read Matthew 25, here ↩︎
5. Also, it doesn’t work, see this short article on the success rates of non violent resistance ↩︎
6. You may have noticed that I link books to Amazon. This is not because I necessarily think you should buy from Amazon, but I find the ability to read a sample of a book helpful as I decide whether to read and/ or buy a book. ↩︎