2018 may be remembered for the political things we focused on. But I think it’ll be remembered as the year we came to understand the limits of truth.
Raw, emotional, conflicted. I used these words to describe 2016 and 2017. Now I’m starting to think it’s the language of the generation. But they aren’t our only words. Words like joy, hope, and love have also emerged as the necessary currency of the age.
Everything seems big and audacious, but that’s only the half of it. It is all important and valuable. And I’m grateful that others have stood at the breach, stared at the abyss, and didn’t flinch.
This is the fourth year I’ve taken stock of the year that was. Check out the previous installments: 2017, 2016, 2015.
- I reduced my writing goal again to be more engaged with my family.
- I continued in 2018 to use a 3 Words goals as I did in 2016, 2017.
- While I skipped the October series, I wrote a short one in January/February and a common theme (which I’ll discuss below) influenced nearly everything this year.
- I tend to neglect my writing occasionally for and cross-posting on Medium.
- And I’m increasingly drifting away from social media.
- This year was a challenge for me on a variety of fronts.
- Engaging the whole sense of self to work and family and self is really hard the older the kids get. (Not that I’m getting any older…)
- But I’m not apologizing for preaching or caring about what it all means.
- I love writing poetry. I rarely make enough time for it.
- Depending on what circles you run in, all the hate and division we’re experiencing in our world is because of polarization and a lack of civility. I’m still not convinced that’s the whole story.
- In fact, it seems our issues stem instead from an epistemic crisis.
- In 2017, I abandoned “my quixotic quest to convince the world the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) or its replacement (GOD) is better than calling the many-named deity simply God.” This year, I took to using Kin-dom instead of Kingdom. Not everybody is convinced, but they don’t need to be.
- A sudden realization of the volume of negativity I’m absorbing has me more convinced than ever that complaining is a dead end. Neither is it something I want to be known for or foster. I continue to see how limiting a negative spirit truly is, and how much it is really opposite the gospel.
- We adopted a kitty who is a true instrument of love and chaos.
I know I’m not the only one who struggled to make sense of the world this year. I know this is true for many of you because we feed off of each other. And not just because of social media or through our use of technology. I think it’s something deeper and connected to how we live our lives.
Like many of you, I’ve read the think pieces about our growing isolation and political silos. I’ve read about my southern neighbors and about how our brains function. The answers to the most burning questions seem linked to the acquisition of more knowledge. But there’s something wickedly isolating about that process.
Even the process of learning what motivates one’s neighbor is a siloing process if it isn’t acted upon or reciprocated.
Now an interview with the historian Joanne B. Freeman has me rethinking everything. (And her book The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War is now on my 2019 reading list.) In it, she draws out the hidden history of literal violence and abuse in the United States Congress (as in on the Senate floor!) from the founding until the Civil War.
She highlights a new sense of inevitability of the war than the one we learned in school. Particularly, how the South used its honor code to political advantage, unbalancing the political power of the Senate.
Our story stops sounding like an intractable and equally damaged world and begins to sound like the tragic consequence of bad decisions and little responsibility. Victims and monsters — it all sounds justified in the moment and so evil in the abstract.
It leads me both toward the sense that serious division may lead to a budding inevitability and hopeful courage, both. Like the courage of the Hebrews against the Egyptians, followers of the way against the Roman Empire, or civil rights pioneers against the sheriffs and protectors of Jim Crow. That’s hope.
Hope is standing up in the midst of unjustified conditions and true absence of full responsibility for who we are and still keeping on. Hope is those first children bussed into schools surrounded by venomous tongues and our children standing up for immigrants, for equal rights, and for common sense gun reform.
I could look at 2018 as a year of pain, but the ongoing challenge of this work fills me with more hope than I’ve ever had. Not that things will be so good that we won’t feel the pain anymore; that there’ll be nothing to complain about. But the freedom that comes from living past the pain with a true sense of hope. Real hope. Justified hope. Hope stemming from a past that proves the fears true, yes. But also proves the hope true.
We can change. And we can help change the world.
The Best Posts of 2018
These are the posts of which I’m most proud.
- Our Guns, Our Idols – Preventing the Peace
- Learning to Love – Solving our do unto others problem
- Not a King
- An Ideal Marriage
- Prayer Book Revision in Three Headlines
- Why I Confess – Empire
- The Scandal of Holy Week
- S-Hole is the language of empire
And check out my most viewed posts of 2018!
The Best Series of 2018
I wrote a short series in January and February, which was the only official series this year. Previously, I’ve written 31 Theses, deconstructed church, asked us to make choices, and keep a Simple Lent.
- The 5 Pathologies That Are Killing Us
- And it’s follow-up post, Love Awakens.
But I was also obsessed with how we talk about truth. Here are some reflections on the meaning of truth and the struggle with finding it now.
(In chronological order)
- The Problem Is We Treat White Nationalists Like They Are Honest
- White Nationalism and the limits of free speech
- Gaslighting for Jesus
- Fundamentalism and the Fear of Being Wrong
- Swindled by Authoritarianism
- Truly Simple Arguments
- Fighting Over Credibility
- More Than Two Internets
- We are abdicating our responsibility for maintaining a culture of truth
- Pipe Bombs and Fascists
The Best Prayers of 2018
The Best Poetry of 2018
I hope you have had an awesome year and I look forward to hearing about your hopes for 2019!
Grace and Peace,
Drew