The Middle of the Story
The struggle for justice has always been the work of generations, not the work of a moment.
The tuna melt sizzled in the pan, sourdough bread turning golden brown in the olive oil. I leaned forward, staring at it, resting my forehead against the microwave that hangs above the range. The refrigerator hummed gently behind me and in that moment those were the only two sounds in the world. I had a feeling of unreality. It felt like that scene in a really intense drama where the directors make the call to not relieve the pressure they’re building by adding any music to the sound track. It’s stripped down and barebones, just the sounds that are already in the room. Sizzle. Hum.
The cool metal band at the bottom of the microwave pressed into my forehead as I stared at the sandwich, bread getting crispy crunchy, vegan mozzarella melting into the tuna salad as it warmed. It felt like the weight of the world was keeping me there, leaning over the stove. I would later realize the weight in my head was a sinus infection and not merely existential angst, but right then, I felt almost too present. All my work at getting back into my body after the election had culminated in this: standing there hyper aware of a sandwich sizzling in a pan, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, in the middle of the story.
It struck me that if that had been a scene in a British murder drama like Broadchurch or The Bay, it would have happened in the middle of the story. The middle of the story is where all the questions are, where all the tension is unresolved. The mystery is still unfolding, perhaps a new twist has revealed itself, generally things get worse from here before they get better.
And that’s exactly where we find ourselves in this moment in our country: the middle of the story. There’s all kinds of tension, and a lot of us are pretty sure things will get worse before they get better. And some of us are realizing that even at relatively young ages, this may be for the rest of our lives.
But the struggle for justice has always been the work of generations, not the work of a moment. And all of us were already in the middle of another story: our own. There has always been history that came before us, and if we stop to think for a moment, we’d realize that there was always a future that would go on without us.
So the question is not how does this story end on the national scale, but how does your story go on from here. Because the only story we have control over is our own. What do we want to do? What do we want history to say about us when our character gets written out of the series?
We’ve always been in the middle of our own story. We are both main character and writer. When I’m writing fiction and my main character encounters a new challenge, I step back and ask myself, how will this character respond? The history of the character and the challenges they’ve overcome in the past dictate the response of this person. So ask yourself, what’s my history? What challenges have I already overcome? And how am I going to respond to this next challenge? The rest of your story is waiting for you to write it.
Fiction for the resistance:
Legacy of Orisha Trilogy by Tomi Adeyemi
Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
JRR Tolkien
Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers
House by the Cerulean Sea and Somewhere Beyond the Sea by T.J. Klune
“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 contributer to Earth & Altar and her latest book is Inward Apocalypse: Uncovering a Faith for the Common Good.
Buy Inward Apocalypse: Amazon | Independent Booksellers
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