What brings Advent, New Years and making New Years Resolutions and acts of resistance together in a blog on the final day of 2016? Hope and change! Hey, you say, “wasn’t Obama about hope and change and now he’s leaving office? Aren’t you being a bit silly? Do you really think the minority president elect will bring about hope and change?” Nope, I don’t! But nor do I think it was solely up to Obama to bring hope and change! And to the extent he failed, we all failed. It’s up to we the people to bring hope and change. How will we do this in 2017?
Anyway, let me explain how I move from Advent, the Birth of Jesus, to the birth of a New Year, to the birth of hope and how resistance, standing up for what we know to be true and right in the face of misogyny, racism, bigotry, and all other forms of injustice, is hopeful.
Whether or not you believe in Jesus or that an infant was born of a virgin, the symbolism is powerful. The transcendent coming down in spacetime, to become mortal and be bound in our time and space. The transcendent, eternal being, becoming one with our bounded mortal lives as a human being. The transcendent comes down every day both in small ways and in big ways in our spacetime, our bounded mortal lives and in so doing, our lives become transcendent as well. Our finite lives become bound up in time and space, every moment a moment in the past, present and future, in the ever present now. The transcendent is as small as someone helping an elderly neighbor shovel their walk, a man forgiving the person who accidentally killed his son in a road traffic accident, it’s a child’s smile, as big as a baby’s birth.
Speaking of which, very baby’s birth is a miracle, a symbol of hope for the future. We are all alike in that we are human, but we are all unique. We are humans, born into communities, naked and alone, into webs of relationships. Each person is unique and their story is unique. Each person has a song to sing, a gift to bring into the world, to make the world a better place. Jesus birth, was a small quiet miracle. It was the transcendent being born to a poor man and woman in an obscure time and an obscure place. The only witnesses were angels, some shepherds, sheep, cows and some wise men that were informed of the birth by an angelical visitation. What mystery, what wonder? It was a silent night, a holy night.
Transcendent visits from the divine are like this, they usually come in small ways, without much fanfare at all to humble open people who are listening. I think the only qualification Mary had to be the Mother of God was that she listened and was obedient to what the angels told her even though it may have meant being ostracized by her husband and her community for violating the family code of honor, something very real and prevalent in many Asian cultures.
Change comes in small packages, as small tiny beginnings in obscure ways and obscure places. These changes, if nurtured, fed and watered can become mighty rivers that have worn deep canyons into mountainsides. The Colorado River started out as a stream. The Grand Canyon was a mere ditch. But over time and centuries, the river steadily grew and steadily wore a deep canyon in the mountains.
Furthermore, it is interesting that Advent comes before the New Year in most Western calendars, although in other traditions, New Year is often celebrated in Spring or later in the winter as is the Chinese Lunar New Year. New Years is also about new beginnings, the possibility of change, of hope. I will not lie, for me and many others, 2016 has been a difficult year. Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as President have been catalytic and destabilizing events in the current world order and with them they do bring tremendous uncertainty and fear. Will the changes these events bring about be good changes? Some who voted for these changes think so. My take on it is that they will bring chaos. But is chaos bad? I don’t know. The old institutions are failing and those in power have not been listening.
These changes have exposed fault lines in the neoliberal economic global order and in globalization. They have exposed the vast differences between the wealthy 1% of the world’s population and the 99% who have not benefited as fully from globalization and the tremendous wealth creation since the 2008 banking crisis. These changes have exposed depth of racism, sexism and bigotry that still exist in the United States and in the United Kingdom, my two nationalities and countries. It’s exposed the limitations of a certain strain of evangelical American Christianity that would grasp at power at any cost, including selling and betraying all its moral stances against adultery, sexual harassment, and sexual assault This form of Christianity articulated by people like Franklin Graham Jr, Jerry Falwell Jr and Paula White, doesn’t seem emblamatic of the second of the two great commandments of the Bible, i.e. loving one’s neighborm one’s African American and Hispanic brothers and sisters as oneself. Instead this ‘muscular’ Christianity threatens to detain Muslim Americans who’ve lived in the country for generations, by threatening to exclude others by building a wall a wall to keep some out, justifying their vote to protect the unborn at the expense of the born. It shouldn’t be a choice. Pro life and pro love means love for all of our neighbors, born and unborn, gay and straight, black and white, male and female, but this Christianity has sought to divide and conquer in the name of access to power.
We need authentic, empathetic leaders. So far, the President elect has not emulated that to any degree. Trump Tower reminds me of Mordor, not a light house nor a beacon of hope. And at this Christmas season, the tower and the tale of the PEOTUS minority victory (he does not have a mandate and Hillary Clinton won by almost 3 million votes and by 2% of those voting) reminds me of the film, IT’s a Wonderful Life, but instead of the happy ending, in 2016 we are going to get the unhappy ending. Greed and power seem to have won, and we’re all going to be come serfs in the new kingdom the President elect and and his rich cronies, the wealthiest cabinet in decades, has come to establish.. It’s astonishing to think that although he said he came to drain the swamp, that he’s hired a cabinet of millionaires with a net worth more than any other cabinet before. Oh but draining the swamp is no longer his priority according to recent tweets.
I know one thing is true for me in 20017 and from now on actually, is that I cannot and will not be silent in the face of injustice. If Trump lives up to his negative promise, I will be speaking up a lot! What kind of change am I meant to bring to the world? What kind of voice and change can we all be involved it?
As I said above, change comes in the form of a baby, still small, quietly, in complete vulnerability. It grows quietly, in the dark, underground, hidden. Change is a series of small actions, small decisions that accumulate. I will take small steps of change and nurture and water them with love, empathy, compassion, hope. I will sow seeds of hope and water them, and feed them so that hopefully they sow change as big as the Grand Canyon! But we all need to do this, because we’re all grains of sand that can come together, or in the current analogy, drops of water that can come together and flow.
Therefore for me, the New Year represents resistance, speaking out, making a difference where I am, telling stories and listening to the stories of others. It means being a nasty woman. It means maybe running for parliament or for some sort of public office. It means marching in the Women’s March on London on the 21st of January 2017, it means contributing to the kingdom of God, whatever that looks like here on earth, each and every day.
Also part of resistance is living well and celebrating life each day. It is daily noticing and being grateful and thankful for the small things and the big things. It’s about enjoying friends and family, it’s about laughter and love in the New Years celebrations and in each and every gathering of family and friends around meals, weddings, births, funerals, weddings, etc. It’s about smelling the roses, watching birds, walking outdoors and enjoying nature, eating yummy food and really tasting it, it’s about really seeing and appreciating both our physical environment, nature, and our social network of friends, family and colleagues.
One of the most profound acts of resistance I ever witnessed was when I was in Palestine eight years ago. I was there doing research for my MPhil traveling with a woman from an Israeli resistance organization to witness whether or not Palestinians were being treated properly by Israeli soldiers at check points. We watched a big as a big wedding party in a converted old school bus traversed the many torturous boundaries from their village across an Israeli Settlement to the wedding venue. At each check point they were stopped and interrogated by young male and female Israeli soldiers serving out their military draft.
The women and girls of all ages down to babies in arms were dressed in traditional garments. They were beautiful and radiant, dressed in all colors of the rainbow, their hands freshly hennaed. They sang and danced from sheer joy even at each Israeli checkpoint for the couple not out of any conscious desire to resist. Even though they were delayed at border after border for some time, they sang and danced in the rusty, rickety old bus. It was a beautiful site to behold. It was a defiant act of hope, an act of hope in the future, that the couple who was getting married had a future and that their future family had a future. They acted out of a hope that the Israeli government has tried to squelch in numerous ways by making the Palestinians daily lives as difficult as possible.
Acts of hope in the future, staking our claim in the future, are acts of resistance. They say we refuse to be defined by fear and darkness, they say we believe in a future that includes us and that we have a say and a voice in the future. They say we have a right to have our voices and perspective heard. They say we have a story to live and a story to share. Don’t be silent. Live out your lives noisily, live them hopefully,and with love and gratitude. Don’t be quiet anymore!
So what acts of hope will you commit in 2017? What precious acts of resistance? Joyfully singing and marching at demos, taking your place at the table at a corporate board or taking your place at the political table and running for office, raising your small children to love their neighbors and commit random acts of kindness,and/or raising your families of all different colors, races, genders, and religions in the multi-colored dresses of our diverse democracy?
I refuse to be defined by the incoming minority president elect and by Brexit and by all current fear and uncertainty these events bring. That is my one and only New Years Resolution!