Sleepless in Virginia

What really scares us?

I didn’t sleep very well on Tuesday night following the Virginia elections. It was a grueling, ugly political campaign, and it did not turn out as I had hoped and worked for. After turning off both the television and the lights, I found myself tossing and turning, worried about the future, and feeling sad that the real changes we’ve achieved in Virginia on human rights, prison reform and the death penalty, environmental protection, and racial equality will be turned back by the next administration.

Shivering in the dark, I felt afraid.

On Wednesday, I discovered that I wasn’t alone. “I’m afraid” were the words I most often heard yesterday from friends and colleagues. Not “I’m so disappointed,” “I’m angry” or “We’ll do better next time,” but “I’m afraid.”

I’m afraid.

It wasn’t an exaggeration or a metaphor. I talked to people literally afraid — eyes wide with worry, all suffering from sleeplessness, talk of leaving the state, full of dread and a vague sense of communal terror, and saying things like “this is the end of democracy.” Afraid.

And, while listening to my friends, I knew something else. If the election results had been the opposite, a group of conservative women sitting somewhere else in Virginia would be saying the exact same things as my liberal friends were saying: they were afraid.

And, when I push past my worries about policies and politics, that’s what really makes me afraid. That we’ve come to fear one another.

Regular people. Moms over coffee, hard-working parents, business people trying to stay afloat in a pandemic, churchgoers and skeptics. Afraid of the “other” side, afraid of the end of things. Afraid. My friends afraid of white supremacy and Christo-fascism, the “other” side surely afraid of a godless woke mob — all afraid that what we care about, the worlds that we work and dream for are under threat.

We’ve become each other’s problem — enemies to be feared.

* * * * *

This week, election day fell just a few days after Halloween — on November 2 — a date Christians know as All Souls Day or the Day of the Dead, the last day of a three-day arc (Halloween on October 31, All Saints on November 1, and All Souls on November 2) that commemorates those who have passed on and invites contemplation on frightening things — darkness and death. Holding election day on a day of darkness and death in our time seems, well, all too appropriate.

Our politics has mostly become an extended exercise in terrorizing voters — it is about using fear as the primary vehicle to motivate people to the polls. Not aspiration, not our better angels, not morning in America or a place called hope. Fear. Pure and simple. The political campaign that terrifies the most people wins.

On Halloween, an email with this quote arrived in my in-box:

THE THINGS THAT FRIGHTEN US JUST WANT TO BE HELD.

— Mark Nepo

This quote echoes something theologian David Dark said recently. I invited David to a live Zoom session for the Cottage’s paid subscribers to talk about the new Netflix horror series Midnight Mass.

(Spoiler alert) In the course of the discussion, he startled me when he defended the “creature” in the series — a frightening winged presence that some in the show mistake for an angel — by saying (paraphrase here), “We shouldn’t demonize the creature. The creature only does what is in its nature. The creature is hungry, and is only following its appetite, or its addiction.”

Although I didn’t think it showed on my face on Zoom, that remark stuck me like lightning. The creature seemed fully evil, the demonic embodied, the malevolent force behind death and killing. When I watched the series, I couldn’t look out windows at night for fear of that creature. It terrified me, perhaps more than any visual literary character I’d ever seen. Yet when David said, “The creature only followed its nature,” I suddenly felt empathy for it. My fear actually transformed into something else — and, in the process, changed the way I experienced the story. Indeed, I went and rewatched the series with this new awareness — and the final resolution with the creature emerged as something completely different in that second viewing. Something life-giving.

Have we developed an appetite for fear? An addiction to anxiety?

I wonder.

Maybe, as poet Mark Nepo suggests, the creature just needed to be held. Maybe we all just need to be held.

* * * * *

What does it mean to hold what we fear?

I’ve been afraid of many things in my life — public speaking, flying on airplanes, failing classes, being diagnosed with various illnesses, evangelical churches, guns, and white conservative men. Indeed, my life has been riddled with anxiety. I’ve worked with a number of therapists and learned strategies to cope. And the most constant advice from those professionals: face yours fears.

There are, of course, different ways of facing fears. Exposure therapies, meditation techniques, talk sessions, prescription drugs. And every person who has struggled with anxiety knows that facing some things — like an abusive relationship or violent situation or an emergency — means getting out of harm’s way as quickly as possible. In general, however, fears are best navigated by somehow encountering them and lowering their threatening nature, in effect, disarming them. Humans beings cannot thrive — or even survive — in a permanent state of anxiety. As a species, cooperation is key to a successful society, not fear.

On election day, I interviewed a guest for an upcoming podcast, theologian and author Grace Ji-Sun Kim. We talked about her new book Invisible on the experiences of Asian-American women in religion. Not surprisingly, the conversation leaned into politics. Grace pointed out,

“We are such diverse people . . . we have points of intersection and points of difference. . . We should never go into this Olympics of oppression, (we) should all be in solidarity to help one another. . . We need to hear one another’s stories and lift each other up.”

And, the converse is also true. She continued, that when we press one another down, “we wind up hating one another. . . When we work toward welcoming everybody . . . we can be less afraid of each other and be open and more loving.”

She’s right, of course. Jesus calls us to lift one another up, to recognize that each life is a gift. In short, solidarity — learning to live gratefully for and with others — is the cure for fear.

Fear may motivate voters in the short run. But fear twists us, it makes us sick, breaks our connections with others, and it even shortens our lives. One of the worst changes in American society since 9/11 is the capitulation to fear-based politics and media in every arena of our social lives. Where once Americans feared Russia or The Bomb, we now fear school board meetings. That’s patently ridiculous, people. Honestly, I want to scream: Get a grip! When we turn each other into evil creatures, we’ve failed as human beings.

That’s the moment when we might just need to fear ourselves.

It is true that our politics is at a worrisome juncture. None of this is to suggest that authoritarianism isn’t on the rise or that Christo-fascism isn’t a problem or that democracy isn’t threatened or that white supremacy isn’t harmful. Authoritarianism is on the rise, Christo-fascism is a problem, democracy is threatened, and white supremacy is harmful. And good people do the right thing in sounding alarms about the spread of dangerous ideas and movements that genuinely hurt others and harm this beautiful planet we share.

And here’s the controversial thing for me to say among my friends: It is also true that a kind of anti-religious bigotry is on the rise, parents should partner appropriately with educational experts in their children’s schooling, and woke mobs do exist. To recognize this isn’t a “both sides” thing.

Truth is, everyone is afraid.

And that’s where we might find solidarity. In our common fear.

In that place, in our shared fear, we might find the real source of the threats stalking us. I suspect we already know the answer: We’re afraid of dying. We’re afraid that our world is dying. We’re afraid our cultures are dying. We’re afraid our political systems are dying. We’re afraid everything is spinning out of our control. We’re at the end of some things, things we’ve loved and treasured. We’re scared. The world seems very dark. The future uncertain.

The answer isn’t killing one another. The answer is looking into the fears on other faces and seeing our own fears reflected in those eyes, in every trembling lip.

We aren’t innocents living in a world haunted by an evil creature — instead, we inhabit an “island” at the end of the world together — where we’ve turned each other into evil creatures. We’ve externalized our own fears, turning others into scapegoats to bear our terrors. We’ve broken our solidarity around the most basic of human things — to be accepted for who we truly are, to be safe, and to be able to be fed and feed others — for the sake of what? Profits for rich people? A surveillance culture that dehumanizes all of us? For power to a few? We’ve fallen for the fear-mongering because these are terrifying times. Is that so hard to acknowledge?

But we are not each other’s enemies. The enemy is both in the mirror and this world-historical moment of crisis in which we live — and how living with our own shadows and being alive in such times — can either bring out our best or our very worst.

We get to choose. Even now, when we’re scared. Especially now. But we can only make good choices if we face and understand our fears.

* * * * *

I refuse to believe that fear sells. Or that it motivates much of anything other than violence. Terror isn’t the way to a healing and healed society, to move people toward compassion, to create meaningful change.

And I also believe there is a difference between ginning up fear and honest analysis, between purposefully terrorizing people and alerting them to problems and genuine threats. This can be a fine line, one hard to walk for any of us.

Part of my vocation is to tell the truth as best I can about religion in history and in contemporary life. That means I sound alarms about the misuse of belief, how religion can be manipulated politically, when faith becomes dangerous to others. And it also means that I try to listen, especially when I personally dislike a theology or ritual that others find meaningful. Not everything I find distasteful or silly is dangerous or destructive; nor is everything I believe or practice is necessary for my neighbor to be a good person or to flourish.

As Grace reminded me, we live in a world of genuine differences — and differences aren’t bad, they are just different. Solidarity — holding one another, and even holding our fears — is a way forward.

In times of heightened threat, we find it hard to hold others; instead, we want to seize control. We all think we have the right answer or that if we find the right leaders they will fix everything. Being in control becomes the goal. But the truth is that things don’t have to exist as I want for the world to be a just or generous place. My job, quite simply, is to speak truthfully and listen fully, to love God and neighbor, to live and work with a kind of prophetic humility for justice and mercy. And to face the fears that stalk me — the fear that threatens to turn me into a monster on the island.

Appealing to our aspirations, being clear about what is truthful and grounded, finding solidarity with others, cooperating on what is truly important, nurturing gratitude for our differences — these things are the way toward communal wellbeing and a more secure future. Even in the most urgent of circumstances, there is always room for finding what we share, even if it seems that all we share right now is being afraid of the dark.

Hold on tight. To each other.

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FOR FULL ACCESS to the David Dark conversation on Midnight Mass, the upcoming Secret Garden podcast with Grace Ji-Sun Kim, and all the other event recordings from the Cottage (including past interviews with Thomas Moore, Patrick Henry, and Mallory McDuff), please upgrade to a supporting paid subscription by clicking:

Your paid subscription supports my writing and research — and gives me the ability to develop more live events and the podcast. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

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INSPIRATION

I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.
― Barbara Brown Taylor

Do one thing every day that scares you.
― Eleanor Roosevelt

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
― Marianne Williamson

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
― Nelson Mandela

Looking back, it’s something I’ve always had:
As a kid, it was a glass-floored elevator
I crouched at the bottom of, my eyes squinched tight,
Or staircase whose gaps I was afraid I’d slip through,
Though someone always said I’d be all right—
Just don’t look down or See, it’s not so bad
(The nothing rising underfoot). Then later
The high-dive at the pool, the tree-house perch,
Ferris wheels, balconies, cliffs, a penthouse view,
The merest thought of airplanes. You can call
It a fear of heights, a horror of the deep;
But it isn’t the unfathomable fall
That makes me giddy, makes my stomach lurch,
It’s that the ledge itself invents the leap.
— A.E. Stallings

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NEWS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Christian Century just ran its review of Freeing Jesus - and it gets to the heart of the book: “Diana Butler Bass’s Love Letter to Jesus”

A snippet:

“This is a different kind of book about Jesus than we have come to expect from someone with a PhD. Writing and talking about Jesus is quite different from expressing devotion; it is the difference between describing someone and writing a love letter to that person. Bass, in this book, does both.”

“Bass has given us a model of how to speak of one’s love of Jesus in a way that has both depth and integrity. And, like all powerful testimonies, her story is an invitation for us to tell our own stories.”

I hope you’ll read the whole thing - and I hope you’ll share the review and the book with your book groups and churches. Freeing Jesus is a great read during Advent - and I’m still accepting requests for in-person and online events in Lent 2022 and beyond. Please contact my booking manager, Jim Chaffee, for further information.

SOUTHERN LIGHTS 2022

A January Adventure in Progressive Christianity
January 14 -16, 2022
On-site, in-person, vaccination-required event on St. Simons Island, GA

Come back to in real life conferencing by joining me and Brian McLaren!

What happens when Brian McLaren and I adopt a beloved event that’s been going for 17 years? We’re re-creating and curating a learning community focussed on strengthening Southern progressive Christianity!

And we invited Anthea Butler, Kaitlin Curtice, and Ken Medema to join us for the adventure. Southern Lights hosts inspiring teachers and joyous music that speak to the concerns of faith and social justice at this important juncture of American history and southern life. This year’s overall theme is “stories that can change everything.” Because southerners love stories. And we know stories matter.

There are only about 80 tickets still available. Please join us. CLICK HERE.

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