Now what do we do?

How one discouraged citizen is trying to hang in there

It’s not that I’ve never been on the losing end of an election. And unless you’re truly unlucky or cleverly bipartisan, it’s probably the same for you. It’s just that right now our politics are shape-shifting in ways that are, as I wrote last week, uniquely disorienting.

“There is nothing new under the sun,” the Wisdom writer Ecclesiastes wrote*, and ordinary wisdom counsels us to take a deep breath and chill. Reactivity leaves us where we are, only angrier. Better to think of a crisis as an opportunity.

Of course, it’s still a free country, so you have every right to pull back or even drop out. Maybe this is a moment to concentrate on your inner life, or to pay attention to family or close friends in ways that distracted activists or neurotic news consumers usually don’t.

Better yet, it might be time to consider the question of vocation, or call. In both the secular and religious contexts, there are deep traditions of learning what it is to listen to your life. To truly listen is to discern a voice, from within you or perhaps from far deeper places.

There are many persuasive sources that teach how to quiet the mind, to settle the soul, or otherwise learn to listen deeply.

I have to confess that I’ve tried and failed to practice meditation in the classic sense. But a few years ago, faced with the greatest personal challenge of my life, and after some self-pity and anxious wheel spinning, a simple question came to me: What do I need to do to meet this moment?

This wasn’t a thunderbolt of insight. It simply meant changing some routines, admitting what it would cost my selfish soul, and putting one foot in front of the other.

Or put another way, I was being called for a season to reorder my commitments and live differently.

One great and pithy insight about call, often quoted, came from the novelist and theological thinker Frederick Buechner: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

My crisis was not a moment of gladness. The call that moved me was the connection between what I needed and what the moment called for.

The late Howard Thurman, who influenced two generations as dean of divinity at Howard University, put it this way: “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive. And go do that. Because the world needs people who’ve come alive.”

If anxiety and discouragement have settled on you since last November, remember a few hard truths.

• There may truly be little you can do about the lousy place we’re in. But listen deeply for the specific, hyper-local need or opportunity. That may be just where your passion and our need intersect.

• Politics has never been the overriding story in America. And it’s not just the economy, stupid. Next to those realities are families, neighborhoods, and non-profit organizations who meet human needs on a scale seen nowhere else in the world. Chances are one of them holds a sweet spot where your passion and human needs intersect.

• And don’t forget the beautiful things that transcend all. Adopt a tree, tend the garden of someone who’s ailing, make some music, create something artful, or work for social change that stirs you at the deepest level — maybe something that government does not and cannot do.

If somehow all of us, or most of us, would listen for a call and follow where it leads, the needle would begin to move.

Small things taken together would make a difference.

And those whose hands are now on the levers of power would begin to know a greater power — the power of those who have come alive.

It will be no contest.

Postscript

My late wife, Jane, and I found deep gladness in an arts organization that makes the world a better and more beautiful place. When I made a gift in her memory, I was welcomed and offered some great work to do. It is a classic case of time and treasure helping everyone, perhaps most of all me. I will write more specifically about it at some point. But for now, let’s promise one another to listen.

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* Ecclesiastes 1:9