Making sense of if all

Almost nothing makes sense these days.

For example:  This week my 90-year-old neighbor put a Trump Pence sign in his yard. I tend to think Trump is the devil incarnate. No, not really, but I will say everything he stands for is so contrary to the gospel I believe in that there does seem to be touch of evil there.

But my neighbor is the same person I recently brought morning glory muffins to after his wife died. Who for nearly a decade has tolerated my unkempt front yard despite his lawn service and the lush green splendor it delivers. Who accepts how worked up his tiny dog gets when my children are playing outside a little too closely to the fence despite my yelling out the back door, “Get back! You’ll rile up Buddy again!!”

I’d like to put out a Biden Harris yard sign but I haven’t quite found one that accurately expresses this sentiment: “I’m really fearful of another Trump term and what it would do to our already divided country. How it would physically, mentally, and emotionally harm the most marginalized among us. But I also love my neighbor and don’t want this sign to be a statement of opposition to him as a person. I want you to know where I stand politically and morally but I also just brought my Trump-loving neighbor muffins and would do it again despite his yard sign. Except next time I might tell him they really need butter, because after a day or two they just start to taste like dry bran cereal.”

Unfortunately they haven’t figured out a way to fit all that onto a one-by-two foot placard. So my yard rests unadorned save for the random toy left out overnight.

Another thing that doesn’t make sense right now:  I keep fervently waiting for someone to step in and fix everything that’s happening in the world. Just send in a politician to unify the country. And maybe a smart Ph.D. to figure out how to get my six-year-old to stay engaged during three hours of e-learning. And while she’s at it, could she maybe just fix the education system once and for all so that all kids get a decent shot to learn and grow and thrive?

I keep waiting for a brilliant physician or physicist or some other p-named professional to invent the miracle cure for COVID-19. And send an amazing public health educator too, if that’s not too much to ask, who can get us all on board with the vaccine or social distancing or mask wearing or common decency. I keep waiting for one pastor to take a stand against racial injustice and diversify our membership and finally figure out how to teach our kids about God without injecting an ounce of religion-bred shame.

But then I recount what little sense I think I’ve made of it all:

The nation has gone up in a blaze of partisan glory. We’re trying so hard to pass blame across the aisle that we can no longer figure out whose fault is whose and where to go from here. And yet we’re all dying on a cross for anything but each other.

Our churches are addressing grief and change and loneliness and civil unrest. They’re trying to figure out how to talk about systemic racism knowing their parishioners are sporting all different yard signs. They’re ministering to parents who are burnt out from juggling work and e-learning and trying desperately to maintain some semblance of normalcy for their kids, and themselves. They’re wary of causing more COVID-19 infections while knowing that church is built on community. That where two or more are gathered, there God is.

Repairing this country, solving our education system, mending centuries-old wounds and racial divides, takes more than a politician, preacher, or other p-named professional.

But if not someone, then who?

I’ve been reading Dear Church, A Love Letter from a Black Pastor to the Whitest Denomination in the U.S. Within the first chapter a line stopped me in my tracks:  “You are the leader you have been waiting for.”

Wait, what?

I am incredibly unqualified to do anything beyond balancing our household budget and combining old leftovers to make a delicious meal and tucking my kids in bed at night, making the sign of the cross on their foreheads while whispering “God bless you and keep you,” in the same way my parents did and sometimes still do.

I don’t have a p-named profession or a bonafide yard sign. I haven’t figured out how I can genuinely grieve with and for my Black friends after the news that Breonna Taylor’s killers would not be charged with her murder, and also be wary of revealing my political stance for fear of alienating people like my 90-year-old neighbor.

I don’t know how to teach my kids about Jesus when I know they’ll someday (soon) come to know how Christianity can be wielded like a weapon against those who are not White, not Wealthy, Not. Like. Us.

And I have absolutely no clue how to keep my kids away from the fence line or how to stop my six-year-old from getting silly putty in his hair and quite literally bouncing off the walls after staring at a Zoom classroom for three hours.

I suppose if no one is coming to fix this mess we’re in, we’ll be forced to turn to what I know to be true: we desperately, hopelessly need each other.

We need to demand justice for the marginalized while recognizing the sinner and saint in us all. And we need to do so with gusto, recklessly pursuing what is hardest of all: being of God and being in the world. Being called for reconciliation with feet firmly planted on the Earth. Knowing that there is no better access to God than through real, broken, everyday people.

If we’re all we’ve got, then we may as well start now. We may as well make mistakes and say the wrong thing because it’s got to be better to keep talking and keep being with than isolating out of fear.

If we are the ones coming to save us, we’ll need to dig deep, to be vulnerable and admit when we don’t have all of the answers, but gosh darn it, we’re all we’ve got! So let’s keep loving and asking for forgiveness and forgiving and doing so together.

If we are who we’ve been waiting for, then we need to fight for whatever source of love and light keeps us walking across our unkempt lawns and delivering muffins to the neighbor who is incredibly different from us.

Except for next time, please try not to rile up Buddy, and don’t forget to mention the butter.