Finding stillness in the whirlwind

Psalm 46 keeps coming back to me, really every day now: “Be still, and know that I am God.”

How is your spirit?

That is the question I always ask my Soul of the Nation podcast guests as we begin our conversations. 

But during our most recent episode, the question was asked of me by Daniel Burke, our Communications Director at the Georgetown Center on Faith and Justice (and former religion editor at CNN) when he interviewed me about my new book The False White Gospel, just as I launch the book and begin a multi-city book tour.

The interview turned things around for me. Usually I ask the questions on the podcast. This time, Daniel did, and started with this question about my spirit as I begin this journey at such an urgent moment in American life – for both politics and faith.

It’s a spiritual question and a personal one, more than a political analysis of where we are in church and state. And truly, I have been really wrestling with the question with what I believe is an Easter book, combining both resistance and hope.

But now it is still Lent, and that’s how it feels to me. Lent is about the wilderness and how to be faithful in an uncertain, difficult, and risky time – like right now. And the wilderness Psalms have been very helpful to me. It’s a time that must drive us deeper, not into politics but into faith, which means our relationship to God.

Psalm 46 keeps coming back to me, really every day now: “Be still, and know that I am God.”

With all the political noise and fear and nervous calculations that surround me and all of us right now, it is so hard to be still even for a few minutes every day and remember who is God and who is not God. Stillness is something I am having to go deeper for, and especially will need in the weeks and months ahead. 

I am not always feeling optimistic these days as I watch and read and feel the news: the outrageous and increasingly dangerous language of Donald Trump, the candidate of a whole political party that apparently accepts his dictator-talk. But the unbelievable becomes more believable each day.

And then there are the up and down assessments of the other party’s candidate, President Joe Biden: the repetitive media focus on his age; the horse-race poll-watching, especially in key battleground states; the issues where he continues to fall short, such as voting rights or effective policing reforms; the amazing advances on matters like jobs, the rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and real progress on the environment; the heartbreaking moral failure of American leadership on the suffering and its causes in Gaza. 

The constant questions I get are: what do you think this all means and what is going to happen? My most honest answer is, “I don’t know.” There is deep white racial grievance in America, which is being expertly exploited but an amoral marketer who cares only about himself, his money, and his power. But at a deeper level, our country’s better angels are in an epic battle with our nation’s worst demons, which run very deep in America. I certainly can’t predict the outcome of that fight for the soul of the nation. Bad religion is ignoring and even distorting the message of Jesus, underneath all the politics; but faith can always rise again and may this time. 

I really don’t know what is going to happen, but do know what I am supposed to do. And that’s only what we all can do. White supremacy in America is fighting for its life now, and will do so by any means necessary. It's time for those of us who oppose our country’s Original Sin to turn to faith. It always is, but we often don’t quite see that. We need to see it now.

In the wilderness of Lent and this political season, it's time to seek God, to trust in God, to put ourselves in God’s hands. One of my dearest mentors, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, taught the difference between optimism and hope. Optimism is a feeling, a mood, or a personality type that sees cups half-full instead of half-empty. In great contrast, hope, he showed us, is a choice, a decision that we make because of this thing that we call faith. 

To believe in God, is to trust in God, and trust ourselves to God. During this season of Lent, we reflect again on Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, where his disciples fell asleep while he was agonizingly praying over what he would soon be facing. While Jesus didn’t sin, he did feel completely isolated, alone, and even panicked – like we can often feel too. A commentator that I was listening to on a morning Lenten devotion quietly reminded me that Jesus, despite all that he was feeling, decided not to escape the situation but to face it, to walk into it, and through it, to trust himself to God. He was fully human while being fully God.

So my spirit is getting rested and prepared for Easter and the choice of hope, despite the evidence to the contrary. Together we will act in hope during this most critical season in our county’s life and history, one that will test the authenticity of our faith communities.

Believe in God, trust in God, act in confidence and courage as God calls us, risk in faith, and leave the rest to the love and power of God.

As Psalm 139: 1-7, says:   

Oh Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me. You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when I am far away. You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do. You know what I am going to say before I say it, Lord. You go before me and follow me.You place your hand of blessing on my head. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand! I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence.

Here is the schedule for the book tour, a town meeting tour. I hope to see you soon.

My new book, “False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy,” is available for preorder. Please consider ordering a copy.