how now shall we live?

thoughts from out of the maddening silence

Hi friends,

This post (letter) has something to do with my formation as a minister, but I’m still fleshing it out. My theology continues to be forged in the fires of experience. My concept of leadership has always begun with, “How do I keep from becoming that whom I wish not to be?”

Thinking through current events…

I’ve been mute over the course of the last few weeks. Just completely speechless. Honestly, I’ve felt increasingly more shocked and numb over the last ten or so days, as ICE rounds people up and starts deporting them and Elon Musk and his groupies walk into places like the treasury and fiddle with codes and AI unimpeded. Having grown up in Venezuela, I’m no stranger to crazy political happenings, and when it comes to Trump, well, I’ve known he wanted uninhibited power since his first term in office, so I guess I’m not completely gobsmacked.

So why am I taken aback? I think it’s largely because of how silently and swiftly everything is happening, with what feels like hardly anyone speaking up or doing anything.

And yet, I guess I shouldn’t be shocked by this. After all, we in America who have access to enough resources to feel like we have financial/social freedom, who have staked a claim to our own version of the-pursuit-of-happiness, have always felt like we had the option to speak out— or not— when it comes to oppression. After all, oppression sometimes feels like it doesn’t touch us (i’m speaking here of people like me who haven’t had a hard time getting into college or finding good jobs or making our voices heard).

But this moment in American history, this moment right now, the one that has felt maddeningly like silence and stagnation, this moment… I’m taking it as my wakeup call.

My Wakeup Call to Silence.

I feel it in my angry reaction to the stillness as everything transpires (why isn’t anyone fighting back right now?!).

I have to pause here and reconcile with the fact that the silence doesn’t feel all that foreign to me. It’s a habitual silence. If I’m honest, I’ve cultivated it in myself over a lifetime.

As to this stillness I sense all around me, I can see it has been cultivated, nurtured, and encouraged by someone, or something, who stands to gain a lot if I (we) don’t speak up.

Silence.

In the last few days, I have felt this silence ring.

I think we are all doing that.

I’m afraid if we (I) don’t pay attention, it might just ring and ring and ring until it deafens us.

I wonder with a sort of horrified curiosity at this cultivated, curated, practiced silence that is emerging right here, right now, out of the midst of the storm we Americans find ourselves in.

Maybe people like me are so quiet because deep down, we-of-the-silent have known for a long time that our democracy isn’t really a place that’s provided freedom for all. And maybe all those times when we bumped into that reality, and willfully ignored it, we lost more and more of this skill called how-to-use-our-voice. And now, every time we let air pass over our vocal chords our mouths slam shut.

Maybe, as we drive around towns and think we might notice dwindling work crews or restaurants that, once bustling, are now shuttered and closed, and when we find there are less folkx cleaning our schools through the night and working on road crews and at construction sites, we recognize that even before the powers-that-be started rounding these precious folkx up and kicking them out, we were already pretending they didn’t exist. And that recognition of our purposeful looking-away makes us sad and ashamed, because we know it’s true that in the name of democracy this country hides and uses people— and tells us we’ll be rewarded if only we do the same. And thus we’ve rehearsed and practiced silence until it’s the air we breathe, in, and out.

Maybe, as we watch our elected representatives cower in fear and do whatever they’re told, we are caught by surprise, realizing they’ve learned to be more afraid of the power of the president than of the power of their constituents, and we are forced to come to grips with the fact that now, when it’s too late (or almost), we should have shown them differently. And so we’ve been imagining ourselves muzzled, collared, caged and stayed silent, wondering if we deserve this, if we should just lie down and take it.

Whatever the reason for the silence, I wonder whether it might be crying out to us (me) with this truth— that “our” democracy has been great for a handful of people and therefore is actually a sham; it hasn’t actually lived up to its promises of liberty and justice for all, and we feel ourselves complicit.

Justice is turned back,
and deliverance stands at a distance,
for truth stumbles in the public square,
and uprightness cannot enter. (Isaiah 59:14)

What’s true of me in my everyday life is true of me in ministry— I hate bullies, and justice, to me, means standing up to them. But first I have to wade through silence I, too, have so often been cowed by.

Silence in me. Silence around me.

But is everyone silent, I wonder? Has everyone always been silent?

What of those who don’t have, who haven’t had, the luxury of silence? Have they ever been quiet? Are they now? My reckoning with the silence is begging me to listen, and not just to listen, but to hear.

Maybe listening is a way out of the silence, my silence.

Would you be willing to make some calls with me? I’m using this app:

https://5calls.org/

It might not seem like much, but if the silence teaches me anything, it’s that it lets the bullies win. And as a person, as a leader, I just don’t think I can do that— I’ve seen enough shitty leaders I know I don’t want to be one.

Much love to you. May you find peace this week.

Carissa

https://5calls.org/

Hang in there, friends.