grief – Notes From the Potting Shed

Responding to Trump

There will be no shortage of reaction to the US election over the coming days and weeks. I spent a good chunk of Tuesday night holding a week-and-a-half old baby and anxiously refreshing my news feed as the results trickled in. Sleep deprivation and paternal emotions didn’t exactly help, but as the night wore on and the outlook got bleaker, I found myself, like many others no doubt, moving through a whole cocktail of anger, despair and fear.

While the consequences of a second Trump presidency will be unavoidably global, not being American, I don’t exactly have skin in the game. The voices of those who will be far more directly impacted ought to be listened to far more attentively than mine, writing from the comfort of distance. But writing is the best means I know of processing, so here are some raw reflections on how I want to respond. Grief, perspective and resilience.

Grief

I’m recognising already a desire in me to move to activity and solutions. But I don’t want to move too fast through the grief of this moment.

I don’t think that Harris was a perfect candidate and there’s plenty about the Democratic party that I don’t love. Like everyone else, I’m bringing all my own biases and preferences into this election, but this isn’t grief because my team didn’t win. I spend my time cultivating young leaders of character, faithfulness and integrity, and Trump is the antithesis of just about everything that we teach. And worst of all, he does it with the blessing of the vast majority of white evangelicals.

So, grief is, I think, an entirely appropriate response and one which I don’t want to move through too fast. It is right, in this moment, to give voice to the suffering of those now living in heightened fear. It is right to grieve the cultural captivity of white evangelicalism and the many factors that created a discipleship culture willing to compromise biblical and moral integrity for a taste of power.[1] It is right to grieve the social dislocation that has left so many feeling left behind and aggrieved. And it is right to grieve the inability of urban, globalist ‘anywhere’ progressives to empathize with the predominantly rural ‘somewheres’ who are drawn to Trump.[2] Like so many left-leaning political parties at the moment, the Democrats seem to be guilty of treating their opponents with dehumanising and condescending derision, all the while failing to tell a better story than the populist, nostalgia-ridden nativism of MAGA.

Perspective

One thing we don’t need right now is another straight, white, male, middle-class Christian leader telling us that it will be ok. That’s why we mustn’t deny or avoid the grief. But just as the psalms of lament are directed at God, perspective in the midst of grief is important.

I need to remember that my loyalty is not ultimately to a party, or a nation state, or even to liberal democracy. I prefer certain parties to others, I’m grateful to live in the UK, and I certainly would choose liberal democracy out of all the options available. But my life is centred on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and that means that my allegiance is to him and my hope is in his Kingdom. That faith propels me to join in with his mission to push back chaos and darkness and work for peace, justice and fruitfulness in the world. But it also protects me from buying into the secular mythology of progress – the idea that history is moving up and to the right. My faith teaches me that we are living in the overlap of the old world of death and decay and God’s new world of justice and wholeness – what theologians call the ‘now and not yet’. With this perspective, I shouldn’t be surprised when power ends up in the hands of those who ought not to be trusted with it. Of course, we fight to elect leaders who will serve the common good. We grieve, we intercede, we hold to account, and (where no other options remain) we non-violently resist when that is not the case. But we also acknowledge that for as long as Sin, chaos and evil are on the loose, any political progress this side of new creation will be compromised and provisional at best. We work and hope for the flourishing of our neighbours, but we’re also realistic in our expectations. We can’t build the kingdom without the King.

Resilience

Resilience isn’t about grit, or optimism, or stubborn idealism. It’s a gift we receive. It’s about a sure and steadfast hope that charges the struggle with resurrection purpose and allows us to adapt, to grow and keep going even when things are dark and hard and costly.

We mustn’t move too fast into activity. We need to allow the space to grieve. But what if we choose to see this moment as a summons?

If crisis precedes renewal, then could this moment of cultural captivity, theo-political idolatry and evangelical hypocrisy be a barren dessert poised for springs of newness and rebirth? I want to be careful – there are no easy answers or silver linings here.

For those of us convicted that Jesus is Lord (and not any president, nation state or ideology), for those of us that see love of God expressed not in the in puritanical policing of boundaries but in how we treat the most vulnerable in our societies, and for those of us who trust that the kingdom comes not through might and power but through suffering love, there is work to do.

The antidote to the bad is the practice of the good. If there is much within white American evangelicalism that has contributed to the ethical incongruence of electing Trump a second time, then it’s on us not simply to call out all that is wrong, but to tell and live out a better story.

That’s not a call to frantic, restless activity. That will get us nowhere. It’s a call to devote our lives to the slow, patient work of becoming the sorts of disciples capable of seeking justice faithfully, sustainably and holistically. That means rooting ourselves in the full, redemptive story of the bible. That means living out a politics which cares for the most vulnerable, which refuses to allow ends to justify means and which cannot be co-opted by any party or ideology. That means the unglamorous daily decisions to choose the way of suffering love over comfort, convenience and self-promotion.

[1] Soong-Chan Rah, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times (Downers Grove: IVP, 2015)

[2] David Goodheart, The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics (London: Penguin, 2017)

Comfortably Numb

I haven’t cried for at least five years. In the last decade, I can only think of two occasions when I have properly wept. And I’m increasingly thinking that this is a problem.

Many writers I really respect have a lot to say about the importance of grief and lament. To give a few quick examples…

‘Lament is a public protest against the way things are. It enables victims of evil to express anger and disappointment with God and the ways things are… lamentation is a process of spiritual catharsis, affirmation, and empowerment. As such it is a gesture of resistance in the face of evil’
John Swinton, Raging With Compassion

‘Mourning is intuition that things are not right – that more is possible. To think that more is possible is an act of political resistance in a world that wants us to believe that consumption is all there is… Hungering and thirsting for justice is nothing less than the continued longing for God to come and set things right… it is to hope that the things that cause us to mourn will not get the last word’
Esau McCaulley, Reading While Black

‘We do know from our own pain and hurt and loneliness that tears break barriers like no harshness or anger. Tears are a way of solidarity in pain when no other form of solidarity remains’
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

I’ve always found this sort of thing inspiring, but it also disturbs me. It confronts me with the possibility that my spiritual formation and my pursuit of justice are, in some important ways, being stunted by my inability to grieve healthily. If Brueggemann is right that ‘hope expressed without knowledge of and participation in grief is likely to be false hope,’ then I have an issue.

It hit home recently when I found out that a young man on my estate had died from substance abuse. I’ve lost count of how many times this has happened now in the seven years that I’ve been here. I greeted the news with sadness and anger, but not with tears. A life bearing all the beauty, potential and worth of the divine image has been cut abruptly, appallingly, meaninglessly short by an addiction that was itself a symptom of so many other layers of injustice. And my response to such evil was barely enough sadness to break the stride of my well-scheduled day.

I can’t pinpoint exactly why I struggle to weep. I have wondered if it might just be a personality thing – perhaps I am wired in a way that predisposes me to a more stoic, internalised approach to grief and I just need to accept who I am and cut myself some slack. But I’m not convinced. First, because I’m cautious of misusing personality typologies to reduce people into neat, fixed and predictable ways of being in the world. Even if I had a learned preference that made externalising grief difficult, that doesn’t mean a) that it is healthy, b) that God made me to be that way, or c) that I can’t change or develop that.

Second, on all the personality tests I’ve done, I generally align more closely to a feeling rather than a thinking preference. I am relatively emotionally intelligent and empathetic. I just don’t cry much. In other words, the struggle with grief is an anomaly rather than part of a wider trend of emotional repression.

I’ve also wondered if toxic masculinity is to blame. I don’t want to dismiss the possibility out of hand. The culture I have been formed in has undoubtedly conditioned me to see weakness as a bad thing and crying as un-manly. By and large, though, I don’t like that sort of masculinity and I’ve never felt comfortable in ‘laddish’ spaces where that sort of group identity proliferates. So, while I am sure that I am not immune to the influence of toxic masculinity, I don’t think that it is primarily to blame for my struggle. When I’m sad, I don’t (consciously, at least) tell myself to man-up or to keep a stiff upper lip.

I wonder if the real issue is to do with comfort. I have made various choices which could probably convince most people that I haven’t sold out to the materialist fantasy of comfort that comes through consumption and the avoidance of suffering. But I am discovering that it is very possible to be physically engaged in working for justice, and yet mentally insulated from the inevitable exposure to suffering. I have learned that numbness is an effective coping mechanism when I’m confronted with pain. It allows me to stay steady and it protects me from the scary possibility of being out of control and wrecked by sorrow. As a defence mechanism, it has served me very well. But the cost, I’m learning, is high.

Numbness may be a convenient way to avoid or minimise my own experience of pain. But it also restricts my own humanity. If Jesus is our model of human flourishing, then flourishing requires the ability to grieve and mourn healthily. And linked, my numbness reduces my capacity to love others. If I really want to give my life in service of others, then I think that requires the willingness to meet others in their grief – not to maintain the aloof safety of emotional distance.

So, what should I do? I am very much open to suggestions. I’m reading Aundi Kolber’s Try Softer at the moment, so I’m alert to the temptation I have to ‘white knuckle’ my way to a solution and try to fix this with strategy and will-power. I’m confident that there is some deep work needed here, and that trying softer is therefore going to be far better than trying harder, and progress is likely to be slow. Once again, I am staring my idol of control in the face, and as I have written about previously, I am not quite sure what it looks like to actively surrender control – in this case to actively surrender my emotions. I have tried to manufacture sadness – sitting still and willing myself to cry – with little success. It feels a fine line to tread between deliberately paying attention to the sorrow and suffering around me and going out looking for tragedy in a masochistic way.

I suppose prayer is the best place to start. I remember years ago reading Richard Foster talking about praying for the gift of tears. That seems the best way to frame what I need – not a project, but a gift. Once again, with my tried and trusted techniques unavailable to me, I have no choice but to return to the unhurried rhythm of grace.

The Blackbirds – part 2

Well, the exile is over and I am back at my potting shed table. I am afraid that the blackbirds leaving their nest was not entirely smooth. Shortly after writing the last blog, there was a commotion in our back garden and I rushed to see the blackbird father flapping around a very near full-grown chick lying with a broken neck just outside the shed window.

I told myself that it is just a bird and that these things happen in nature, but I was still upset.

I don’t know what happened to the other chicks and I presume that is good news. There were three eggs when I first discovered the nest, and I presume the absence of any other casualties means that the other two chicks successfully made it out into the big wide world. Once we were sure that there was no more life in the nest, we took down the box of wood, braced for some unpleasant discoveries. To our relief, they had well and truly moved out and left everything neat and tidy.

It’s been an odd experience. Cohabiting with these birds has been a healthy pin-prick of reality to deflate my all-too romanticised view of the natural world. To a large extent, I have bought into a suburban understanding of ‘nature’ which sees ‘the environment’ in general, abstract terms – viewing the countryside as a place of leisure and beauty but from a safe enough distance to avoid the harsher realities of life in the natural world. As I set out on this journey of agrarianism – seeking after greater fidelity to creation, greater integrity to land and place and local community – I know that I have some painful unlearning to do. It will not be possible to truly care for creation in personal, holistic, non-abstract ways and remain insulated from the realities of death and violence.

But I don’t think the solution is simply to toughen up. I don’t want to replace romanticism with cold indifference to death and destruction. There is something in the sorrow I felt as I disposed of that broken little body – fresh-feathers ruffled and scrawny legs askew – something more than the squeamishness of a sheltered life, something that I think is good. It’s the deep sense that this is not the way that things should be.

Of course, a dead blackbird is a very trivial demonstration of the wrongness of things in our world. But it is still wrong, and in that moment, it got under my skin enough to lead me to place of grief. And I don’t do grief well. I have had the rare privilege of being able to opt out of grief through most of my life. Whilst that’s comfortable, I am coming to realise that it is not altogether good for me. Because grief – lament – is the right response to all that is wrong and broken in our world – whether something as small as a dead blackbird or as huge as wars and pandemics.

Numbness – borne of my unfamiliarity with grief – is a very useful defence mechanism – but it also limits my capacity to engage honestly with reality.

Perhaps then, this unexpected saga with the blackbirds in my shed has helped me to see a little clearer a small part of the journey ahead of me. As I re-root my imagination in the rich soil of agrarianism – as I learn to slow down, pay attention, settle for less, enjoy it more, be a good neighbour and embrace a deeper, more contemplative rhythm of life – I want to do so in a way that embraces rather than escapes the reality of death and violence in our world. I have a suspicion that my capacity to grieve may well be linked to my capacity to wonder and my capacity to love. I cannot grow only two of them – I need all three.