Here is what I know
January 21, 2025
In yesterday's Letter from an American, Heather Cox Richardson noted that some of yesterday's Executive Orders are, in the words of one observer, “bizarre legal fanfic not really intended for judicial interpretation.” Even so, they are already causing harm. One of my friends reported panic attacks upon reading about the EO that attempts to ban transitioning or gender nonconformity.
So many of these "bogus decrees" (in Jennifer Rubin's words) are appalling. Ending birthright citizenship? Pardoning the violent rioters who engaged in the January 6th insurrection? Not to mention withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords and from the World Health Organization -- as though we were not an interconnected planet where the climate crisis and pandemics impact everyone.
One of the president's wealthiest supporters spoke to the crowd and threw two Nazi-style salutes. (Wired has an article about neo-Nazi delight at his gestures). And then the Anti-Defamation League denied that these were Nazi gestures, which leaves many Jews reeling. Many of us grew up believing that the ADL's purpose was to call out antisemitic hatred. It's hard to square that circle now.
Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse that involves manipulating someone into questioning their own reality, feelings, and sanity. One of its tactics is lying, while insisting that the lie is the truth. Like denying the lived reality of trans people. Or claiming that January 6 was "a day of love," or that there is no climate crisis, or that the sieg heil everyone just witnessed is not actually a Hitler salute.
And all of that was just within the first few hours. We are in for a ride.
The best thing I read yesterday was Beth Adams' beautiful essay How to Survive at her blog The Cassandra Pages. She notes that we are entering a time that we know is going to be difficult, and we need to remember to take care of ourselves and those around us. The coming years, she notes, will ask our mental and physical strength. I would add emotional and spiritual strength to that list.
Beth writes:
[T]here is almost always something life-giving to notice, like the mother and child on the bus today. There is color. There is music. There are words. There’s the smell of food being prepared, or flowers in a supermarket display. There is the cold of winter on my cheeks, and the warmth of the distant sun which can still be felt even in sub-zero temperatures. There’s the taste of coffee, salt, lemons, chocolate. We miss so much when we’re wrapped up in ourselves and our worries — and our screens — and we have to train ourselves to turn back to the actual world, which is right there, existing, waiting to be noticed — full of sorrows, yes, but also full of beauty, joy, and simplicity.
Beth calls us to connect with our innate humanity. She invites us to notice beauty amidst brokenness, and from noticing to move into doing: plant seeds, bake bread, learn a language... something creative and constructive, something we can materially change. I found a similar message in an essay by Jared Yates Sexton that a friend sent me yesterday, called Preparing for the Storm:
Pick something to learn or do or construct. Learn a new language. Pick up a guitar. Start painting. Find some hobby that illustrates materially that things build over time. Something that, when we get to January 1st, 2026, you can look at and realize that your efforts and energy are important and constructive.
(Most of his post is more explicitly about preparing for authoritarianism and political collapse, though in typical fashion I'm drawn toward the spiritual instructions. For me, the encouragement to make music or art is inherently an invitation to spiritual life.) In early March of 2020, when Covid was new to us, I wrote a letter to my congregation which I cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi. I wrote:
My friend and colleague Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg writes that now is a great time to double down on our spiritual practices… and if we don’t think we have any, now is a good time to develop some! Whether that means prayer, meditation, yoga, making art, listening to music: we should lean into whatever sustains our hearts and souls in this time. Because we’re going to need every ounce of strength and compassion and rootedness we’ve got in order to take care of each other.
It was true at the start of the pandemic, and it is true now. I am resolving to make more art in the coming months and years: not because I am an artist (poet, yes; artist, no!) but because creativity nourishes my soul, and I need all the nourishment I can muster. We all do. I'm going to bake bread and cook new recipes and sing in harmony as often as I can, because those things will help me stay steady.
Here is the best counsel I can offer:
Give yourself permission to pay less attention to the news. Feeling tempest-toss'd by each new horror is objectively exhausting, and we will need our strength in order to care for each other. Practice kindness. As Pirkei Avot instructs, give each other the benefit of the doubt: many of us are already struggling emotionally and spiritually. Hold fast to what you know is true and what you know is right.
Be ethical: let your integrity shine, even when it seems like it doesn't matter because the world is so broken. (It does matter, especially when the world is so broken.) Don't let anyone convince you to rewrite the past. (It's easy to think in Orwell's terms -- "we've always been at war with Eastasia" -- witnessing current attempts to whitewash the insurrection. There will be more of this. Resist it.)
The new regime was clear that they intended to begin with a campaign of "shock and awe." Shock and awe, according to Wikipedia, is "a military strategy based on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy's perception of the battlefield and destroy their will to fight." What we're witnessing is shocking, yes. But awe? Think about what brings you awe.
I feel awe when I encounter beauty. I feel awe at the range of human diversity, including diversity of gender expression. I feel awe when I consider our precious planet: its many fragile ecosystems, the vast currents of our oceans and skies. I experience awe when I see people lifting each other up. On a good day, the fact that I'm alive, that God restored my soul to me this morning, brings me awe.
Awe connects me with that infinite source of justice and mercy my tradition names as God. The "G-word" may not work for you; if that's the case, find a source of meaning that does speak to you, Truth or Justice or Hope or simply doing what's right because it's right. Cultivate a sense of awe, and let it buoy you. We will need to lift each other as we stand up for those who are more vulnerable than we.
In the words of my friend and colleague R. David Evan Markus, "The call of liberation resounds until the root causes of bondage – false superiority, xenophobia and hate (even in polite form) – are history." In the words of poet Aurora Levins Morales, "Another world is possible." Don't give up. We have work to do, and we have each other, and I believe that together we can be stronger than we know.