For the first three months of a woman’s pregnancy, most people (quite often, even the mother herself) don’t yet know it’s happening. What is going on on the inside isn’t yet signaled by much in the way of changes on the outside.
That is also true of personal and societal change. It’s much like the Angel Gabriel saying to Mary, “Tell no one.” There’s something about the most stupendous changes in life that are presaged not by roaring trumpets but by silence. Conception, whether it be in a womb or in society, is hidden from the naked eye.
So it is that in America today, while externally the most dramatic changes are underway, beneath the surface there is something equally dramatic occurring. It is invisible, it is silent, but it is the conception of a new world. It is birthing in the shadows, incubating in the alchemy of millions of people’s hearts and minds as we try to process what’s happening, not yet articulated but destined to come forth as surely as seeds will sprout.
People are aware that nothing from the past – including institutions we had been raised to believe we could trust – have the capacity or the courage to lead us through this jungle now. If anything, we are shocked by the cluelessness of those who claimed that they could. We have momentary bouts of panic as we realize there is no one out there to guide us, but we get hints of something that we know in our hearts is true: we will know what to do. We will know.
We will be guided by a voice within.
The reason we don’t know what to do now is because we have not yet become the people we need to be – not only to discern the correct guidance but to be able to carry it out. Since November 5th there is been a lot of activation – many people slapped right up the side of the head, waking up and growing up. Today’s political activation is mainly internal. This isn’t the moment to be marching in the streets so much as a moment to be attending to some changes in our own souls. Whether we call it that or not, it’s what millions of people are doing.
Put bluntly, we need a miracle now, which is only terrifying if you don’t think that it can happen. But they have happened repeatedly throughout our history. The Abolitionist movement (among white Americans) arose from early evangelical churches in New Hampshire; many leaders of the Women’s Suffrage movement were religious Quakers; and Dr. King was a Baptist preacher. Malcolm X, even in his most militant phases, was insistent that the walls of injustice would only be torn down if we first purified our souls.
Miracles only show up where there is love, and they are deflected where there is not. The over-secularization of much of the left is as dry and barren as the faux religiosity on much of the right. On both sides of the political spectrum, judgment and hate block the way to the miraculous.
How do we erase the judgment and hate from our own souls? First of all, by noticing it. If we’re honest with ourselves, we see that most of our anger is directed at those who simply had the audacity to disagree with us! But no one owes it to us to agree with us. No one has a monopoly on truth. And this country belongs to all of us. Dear God, please take away from me my self-righteousness, my arrogance, my absolute certainty that I’m right and others are wrong. Amen is a really good prayer.
In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “The creation of the Beloved Community will require a change in external circumstances as well as a qualitative shift in our souls.” A new state of being precedes a more effective way of doing.
The constant conception of new life – in a body or in a civilization – is the way of nature. Sometimes it’s only a tiny flower growing up through cement. Or a blade of grass just coming out of the ground. Or a vague thought, or a shout out loud: “Hell yes, I’m showing up for this.” A dose of love, or a dose of courage. The tiniest movement leads in time to a mighty blast of power.
New insights, synapses, moments of reconciliation and forgiveness, realizations about ourselves and others—I sense that all that’s happening now. Today, it might seem like little more than a trickle, seeming to be so little hope. But in time, it will be a massive wave. We will refresh. We will be made new.
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