On What's Worth Fighting For
I feel like I’m running behind constantly, like I can’t catch up. Some of this was due to losing power for 8 days during winter storm Fern. Everything ground to a halt except the basics of survival. Feeding my kids and pets and trying to keep everyone warm enough. Then the power came back on and exhausted from survival, I stumbled into a series of already busy weeks, now a week behind on many things.
Good things are happening: I signed a new client, and launched their social media and substack spaces, which is always more work at the beginning than when I’m in a routine with a posting schedule.
We successfully launched a new girls’ troop under Scouting America, chartering in early March officially. We are small and yet in a predominately white area we are already multi-racial and bilingual.
Bad things are happening: I don’t have to tell you, you see the same news as I do. On the Friday I received the last piece of paperwork I needed to charter the girls’ troop, I opened Facebook to discover that Pete Hegseth had basically forced Scouting America to make some changes in order to preserve the scout troops on military bases. Initially that felt like a gut punch, but I don’t believe the changes are as bad as some of the comment threads on Facebook believe they are. The problem is Hegseth isn’t letting up and ultimately he wants girls’ out of scouting.
I said to my husband last weekend that hopefully something distracts him that isn’t a war. Then they bombed Iran and killed a whole bunch of little girls in what is quite possibly a strike that was recommended by AI and not properly vetted before someone hit the button. And that was before Trump threatened to wipe out all of Iran yesterday.
In Nashville a few weeks ago, ICE kidnapped a journalist who was here legally on an asylum claim, and it’s really hard to not conclude it was retaliation for her reporting on ICE’s activities. That’s just one of many ICE atrocities that I saw reported in that time frame, and those are just the ones we know about given that they’ve deported families with no notice to keep people from investigating, and we know people have died due to lack of medical care, and again, those are just the few we know about. This week we learned of a newlywed snatched from her husband when she went to get a military ID. Like Liam Ramos and his father, because the story went national, she was released from the detention center, but they are still trying to deport her despite her following all the proper steps for citizenship.
One of the more horrific ICE stories from a few weeks ago as well was one of them transporting pregnant minors to Texas to prevent them from getting abortions. These children are unaccompanied minors and are almost certainly pregnant because of rape. It seems the horrors we are willing to perpetuate have no end.
And all of this begs the question, how are we supposed to live in this world where the atrocities never cease and the people perpetuating them are attacking our election systems to try to make sure they never lose power so they can continue their evil rampage across the lives of whoever they’ve deemed to be enemies: whoever they’ve deemed to be “other”?
And God knows, I certainly do not have all the answers, but I know that making progress in my spheres of influence helps. Working towards a better world in my corner makes a difference. All injustice and supremacies are intertwined. Pull a thread wherever you are, and you help unravel the entire tapestry.
Because, one, it’s almost impossible to know for sure the ultimate impact of our work in our lifetimes, and two, if we all worked on what is in our reach, I believe we can change the world. Still. Even in the midst of the death and destruction and heartbreak and loss. Because as Sam said to Frodo, we’re holding onto the idea that there’s good left in the world, and that is always going to be worth fighting for.
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“I wish I could still believe in God, but I can’t be a Christian anymore because of ______” Fill-in-the-blank with racism, misogyny, homophobia, toxic capitalism, and so on. I’ve had this conversation with different people almost word-for-word over and over. White American Christianity has so defined God that many people cannot separate God from the toxic theology they were taught.
But this isn’t the God I see in the Bible. The Bible shows us a God meeting people where they are and nudging them towards justice and total thriving for all: shalom. The Bible details arcs of justice and societal reform. If we understand how radical those arcs were in the context of the day, we can extend them forward into the future and figure out how to work for justice, total thriving, and societal reformation in our day.
I grew up in that first world view. Come along, and I’ll tell you the story of how I escaped, and I’ll show you a theology that I believe paints a more accurate picture: a faith for the common good where everyone thrives and no one is left out.
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Anna Elisabeth Howard writes highly caffeinated takes on shalom as a lens for everything from her front porch in Hendersonville, TN where she lives with her husband and two sons. She is a community organizer and movement chaplain with a background in youth and family ministry and is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary. An avid hiker and backpacker, many thoughts start somewhere in the middle of the woods, or under a waterfall. She is a regular contributor to Earth & Altar and her latest book is Inward Apocalypse: Uncovering a Faith for the Common Good.
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For Frodo!