Holding a Vision

Most people I know are very glum about the multitude of terrible things that Donald Trump is doing to our country.   With good reason!  And I have heard many activists sort of trying to figure out how to even sort out priorities in a time this dark with so many things going wrong at once.  It is quite critical that as People of Faith that we listen for leadings and inner promptings of the Spirit and be faithful to those.   As my favorite quote from Thomas Kelly says we are not called to die on every cross but called to our particular task.   This is even more important to be clear about in times of crisis or we become scattered and unfocused and thus also unfaithful.

"I dare not urge you to your Cross, but God, more powerfully, speaks within you and me, to our truest selves, in our truest moments, and disquiets us with the world's needs.  By inner persuasions God draws us to a few very definite tasks, our tasks, God's burdened heart particularizing God's burdens in us.  God gives us the royal blindness of faith, and the seeing eye of the sensitized soul, and the grace of unflinching obedience.  Then we see that nothing matters, and that everything matters, aand this my task matters for me and for my fellow human and for Eternity. ....

In my deepest heart I know that some of us have to face our comfortable, self-oriented lives all over again.  The times are too tragic, God's sorrow is too great, our night is too dark, the Cross is too glorious for us to live as we have lived, in anything short of holy obedience.  It may or it may not mean change in geography, in profession, in wealth, in earthly security.....Little groups of such utterly dedicated souls, knowing one another in Divine Fellowship, must take an irrevocable vow to live in this world yet not of this world...kindle again the embers of faith in the midst of a secular world."
Thomas Kelly The Testament of Devotion 1941

So I urge you to be clear about what the Divine Author has tenderized your heart to and be faithful to acting on that now because the threat the Trump Administration places upon American Democracy and the world as a whole is indeed grave.

If you have read my previous posts about the research on the 14 signs of fascism, then by logical extension the types of activities that will protect democracy from fascism are ones that: protect freedom of press, speech, and assembly.  Activities that lesson fear (deglorify the military and patriotism) , and promote feelings of tolerance, the embrace of differences and diversity and the inter-connectedness of all peoples - especially calling out sexism, homophobia, anti-semeticism or xenophobia when it is promoted .  Actions that call corporations and big money interests to accountability and challenge corruption and cronyism and other unethical behaviors at they appear. The protection of intellectual rigor, education, labor, and science as they come under attack. Strenuous objection, challenging, and resistance to police violence, state violence (like torture or assassinations), or the invasion of privacy and the increase of surveillance of the general population. And the protection of voting rights and fair elections and other civil liberties.  These are the actions which are protective of democracy.

I would also hold out to you that while keeping a careful eye on the incursions against our freedoms and the destruction of various departments of the US government that it is also important to keep a vision of what we want.  It can become too easy to become so focused on the destruction that one can no longer remember what you want.   I would also say as a silver lining that some of what we had was "good enough" but not actually what we want.  The ACA is a good example.   It insured many more  people than before and yet fell far short of universal coverage and by keeping the insurance companies enshrined in the heart of it, it kept it really expensive.   Maybe the attempts to destroy it could actually lead, if we keep a vision of single-payer health care, to just that.  Bernie Sanders is holding up that vision by offering a bill to that affect.

What are the other things we really want?  George Lakey recently reminded me that William Penn founded PA as part of the "holy experiment"...that this holding of vision for God's kingdom is in the DNA of Quakers.  All through the bible the prophets are people who give voice to vision and call others forward.  George also points out that the left has not done a very good job of promoting vision for decades.   He is reading at each bookstore he talks at on his book tour the Black Lives Matters recently released vision statement.   What is your Vision?  We won't get there folks without one.