Just woke up from a hideous nightmare in which I was wandering around a huge box store looking for food (the place was stuffed with food but I couldn’t understand what any of if was) and then, standing in front of a twenty pound bag of precut avocado (ugh) it came to me that I Hadn’t Blogged. Woke up sweaty and panicked. Is it possible, my heart racing at a million miles an hour, to just wake up and Not Write? What a terrifying proposition.
Except that now I have literally read the entire Internet seeking some easy outrage and I’ve got Nothing. My resolution to stay basically away from politics during Advent is all fine and dandy, but nobody is talking about anything else. At least not that I could find.
And….that is really depressing. Because we talked politics for something like two years, without any break. At All. Every day was some new fresh Sheol. Either we were all panicking about the horse race part, or we were panicking about the insane things people were saying, or we were all just angry (am I only describing myself here?) and clicking wildly for some way out.
Did manage to finally listen to this excellent lecture by Russell Moore given just before the election. I tried valiantly to watch it before, but our Internet was always ailing. Now that Trump is going to be president, all the cyber waves fly along like a dream and I can read and watch anything I want, except that I no longer want to.
Anyway, I commend the whole lecture to you. It’s really good even months later. And the part that I liked best (although I really did just love all of it) was the little interlude about not Every Single Election being the End of the World. Seriously. I get that things are really bad, and There Is So Much Evil, but. How can I say this kindly? We haven’t really gotten to apocalyptic level evil yet. It looks like we have a while longer to muddle along together. And this being so, I do wish every single American could stop with the panic. Really, we should save it for when North Korea and China decide to join together and nuke us. It’s not worth freaking out over every single event that happens every single day.
Like, so, the Jill Stein recount spluttered to its own disconsolate end. Ok, that may be too bad, but we all are still breathing air. And there are still stores you can walk into and buy twenty pounds of precut avocado. Or maybe some people don’t like Trump’s cabinet picks. Of course he is alienating half the country with each pick. Of Course. Are some of the picks not going to be good for America? You betcha. All the people Trump is appointing are human, and therefore, in myriad small ways, Evil. But that was true for Obama’s cabinet, and look, we’re all still walking around, or at least most of us.
Humanity is Evil y’all. It just is. That’s why we have to celebrate Christmas. That’s what Christmas is For–to admit that we all blew it So Badly that God could come to earth as a literal human baby and still be stronger than all our capacity to correct our own course. This should be humiliating, but also pretty great. We might as well nestle back in our couches, or our refugee cots, and drink whatever we can get our hands on (well…maybe not whatever) and rejoice that God is strong enough to deal, even as a baby. And he isn’t a baby any more! He’s in heaven, glorified, powerful, ready to judge us all whenever we hit that sweet terrifying moment.*
I love that we, all of us together, are so desperately in love with ourselves that we can’t even remember fifteen minutes ago, nor look forward to the next twenty, without seeing the four horsemen of the apocalypse around every bend. And I love that God doesn’t lose his ability to cope when we are losing ours. I love that he just waits and waits and waits. And while he’s waiting we have all kinds of time to see that we aren’t that strong, we aren’t that good, we aren’t that patient, we aren’t that giving, but that we all get to keep drawing breath anyway, and eating bread, and drinking wine, or maybe Frappuccino. And hey! Maybe lots of us can die in the arms of Santa! Which, frankly, is as unsettling as buying twenty pounds of precut avocado.
Pip pip.
*Please don’t freak out that I inadequately articulated the dual natures of Christ, AND messed up the Trinity in one paragraph. See! STOP FREAKING OUT.
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