I have a nifty little app on my smart phone that allows me to look up genealogies, not just of famous people, but of just about everyone, including Mr. Hoban, an elderly man who lived down the street from me when I was a kid. He was a veteran of two wars—World War I and World War II. He was so gentle and kind, his activity as a soldier seemed incongruent with the man I knew, who wouldn’t hurt a fly. I went to his garage one day and found him bottle feeding baby rabbits whose mother had gone missing. Looking back, I have the feeling he was like so many people, caught up in situations he hadn’t caused but couldn’t easily avoid, a feeling we’re all experiencing these days. We’re in circumstances we didn’t cause, and certainly don’t support, but now can’t avoid. So we’re keeping an eye out for the metaphorical baby rabbits of the world and making sure they are taken care of.
The other thing I remembered about Mr. Hoban was his garage, the back side of which was close to the ground, so by standing on the stack of firewood he kept there, I could climb up on his garage roof and lie on my back and stare at the sky, which I would do from time to time when I needed privacy and perspective. Even today, when feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, I climb that wood pile in my mind, and in my imagination, lie on that roof, gaze at the heavens, and feel a certain peace. It was, what we call now, my happy place. I’ve been visiting there quite a bit lately.
I went there again this week, in my mind, when Donald Trump laid claim to Greenland by demanding it from Norway, confusing it for Denmark, then went on to rage about Norway’s failure to give him the Nobel Peace Prize, since he had singlehandedly stopped eight wars. He then warned, without a trace of irony, the government of Iran not to retaliate against those Iranians protesting for democracy. He then announced he was forming a Board of Peace, on which he had invited Vladimir Putin to sit. Leave it to Donald Trump to give peace a bad name. To continue with our metaphor, we know who is tending the battered creatures, and we know who is doing the battering, don’t we?
The challenge for us is to live in hope and not despair, so this evening I want to talk about the things that give me hope, that temper my gloom. What inspires me today is the conviction that we are not alone. For every oligarch who has sold their soul, for every official who has lost their way, who act with timidity when courage is required, there are many others who are decent and brave. There are far more people who value compassion and truth than worship at the altar of greed and tyranny. We mustn’t make the mistake the prophet Elijah made, who in his moment of darkness, complained to God that he alone was faithful, causing God to remind Elijah there were thousands of people every bit as righteous as Elijah himself.
I remember Elijah’s story because I often catch glimpses of Elijah in myself, when I am inclined to think that resistance to our current troubles rests solely on me, forgetting there are tens of millions of Americans who are equally determined to resist Donald Trump’s tyranny du jour. All around our nation are governors, senators, representatives, soldiers, police officers, prosecutors, and judges committed to justice and the rule of law, forming a bulwark against his cruelty.
In addition there are Americans who might not have sworn an oath to protect and preserve the Constitution but are every bit as resolute in their defense of decency and democracy. They recognize a dictatorial impulse when they see one, are disgusted by it, and will stand against it to their last breath.
What gives me hope is the witness of history, the dismal track record of tyranny. In the end, tyrants are never celebrated, only scorned. Their statues are pulled to the ground. The adulation they crave never endures. Tyrants are not invincible, they only think they are. Bashar-al-Assad, whose family ruled Syria since 1971 and thought himself beyond the reach of the citizens he ruled, now cowers in Moscow. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.
Last year, a group of Quakers from our meeting visited the civil rights sites in the South. While there, they found no statues of Bull Connor or Lester Maddox, whose legacies are now relegated to the dustbin of history. Do you know who replaced Lester Maddox as the governor of Georgia? Jimmy Carter. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.
I am encouraged. I am encouraged by the movements of resistance being born right now, led by people whose names we don’t yet know, but will one day know and honor. I am encouraged by the True Church, not the Paula White church and the First Baptist Dallas church, whose abandonment of the gospel is crystal clear, but I am encouraged by the True Church, by Pope Leo who has made clear his contempt for American’s immigration policies. I am encouraged by Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, monks, and atheists who march and write letters, who feed and clothe immigrants and hide them away. I am encouraged.
I am encouraged by federal attorneys and prosecutors who resign rather than break the law. History will judge them well.
I am encouraged by the tens of thousands of Minnesotans, even in this bitter cold, carrying food to their immigrant neighbors, surrounding schools, workplaces, and churches, protecting our most vulnerable neighbors against Trump’s brownshirts, who will one day, I promise you, look back on their participation with shame.
I am encouraged. I hope you are too. For to be discouraged is to think ourselves alone in this moment, battling this tyranny alone. To be discouraged is to be like Elijah, forgetting God is raising up other prophets, other lovers of decency and good, to be discouraged is to forget that the mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.
I am encouraged by the inexorable, inevitable blending of races in America, which I believe will prove to be our salvation. This past Christmas Eve, my extended family gathered at our home. My brother David and his Black husband, Ken, were present, along with my nephew Pierson and his Hispanic wife, Ari. My white nephew who married a woman from Sri Lanka was there, as was my nephew who married a Black man. We were all there together, a formerly pale, pasty Midwestern family, now with Black, Hispanic, and Asian people mixed in, and not a moment too soon. We are becoming less pale with each generation, for which I say, “Thank you, Jesus.”
In the bad, old days, interracial marriage was called “miscegenation,” and was illegal in 41 states. Miscegenation was defined as the “reproduction between people of different ethnic groups, especially when one of them is white.” The famous example is Richard Loving, a white man, who married a Black women, Mildred Loving, in 1958. They were found guilty of violating Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924 and sentenced to prison.
Their sentence was suspended by Judge Leon Bazile on the condition the Lovings leave Virginia and never return. The Supreme Court of Virginia upheld their sentence, but in 1967 the United States Supreme Court found in the Loving’s favor, removing the legal barrier to interracial marriage. Had that not happened, I have two brothers and three nephews whose marriages would have been illegal. Even I have a mixed marriage. When we met, my wife was a Methodist Democrat and I was a Quaker Republican, a matter we resolved by her becoming a Quaker and me becoming a Democrat. A win/win.
This gives me hope. Even as the current iteration of American leadership seems determined to eliminate diversity, equality, and inclusion, many more Americans are happily embracing those values. To millions of Americans, the people of color others appear to fear, are to us treasured family and friends, and we will not tolerate their diminishment, abuse, or exclusion. We do not, for even a moment, believe they are less American, less human. We resist, with a smile of steel, any law, edict, or executive order that denies their full humanity.
We believe the same Constitution that protects our rights also protects their rights, the same God who loves us, loves them; the same opportunities we enjoy should also be enjoyed by them. But more than that, we believe historic wrongs should be set right. It is not simply sufficient to apologize and pledge to do better.
Rather, it is incumbent upon those of us who have benefited from power and privilege to establish systems of redress and reparation that address and remedy our national sin of exclusion. When we were young, we were taught by our parents to repair the damage we did. It’s one of the first things we’re taught. Our societal misdeeds are no different. When we break it, we fix it. We repair the damage we did. We do not, under any circumstances, multiply injury.
This is what gives me hope. Ill-intentioned governments and leaders can pass all the hateful laws they wish, but there will always be people of good conscience who will resist their odious laws. Make no mistake, there are some in our nation today who are as committed to furthering historic harms as we are to correcting them. There are some in our nation who will not be content until everyone in this nation looks like them and thinks like them. But thank God, there are many more people in our nation who treasure the broader palette of humanity.
I have hope, because I know that no leader can make a nation become what it refuses to become. A president may well have the power to order, but the power to obey or not obey rests with the people. What we will not obey are those orders that strike at the heart of our families, what we will not obey are those orders that diminish the lives of the people we love.
Years ago, the superintendents of our yearly meeting, a husband and wife, asked to meet with me and another pastor, so we went, and were told we couldn’t marry gay people, that our Faith and Practice forbid it, that same-gender marriage hadn’t been approved by our yearly meeting, and that as long as they were in charge, it wouldn’t be allowed. My fellow pastor told them he would not place his conscience in the hands of the least ethically evolved among us.
I have hope, because I know there are millions of people determined to do the right thing no matter how many others might loudly declare it to be the wrong thing. I have hope because of the people who remember the words of that great Hoosier saint, John Wooden, who said, “There is no pillow as soft as a clear conscience.” I have hope, because I know there are millions of Americans who recognize unjust and cruel laws when they see them, and are determined to disobey them, come what may. We’re seeing it now across our land, in small towns and major cities. People refusing to win the approval of cruel people, people refusing to sell their souls for pennies on the dollar. People who know that once your conscience is gone, it is gone for good, that there is no pillow as soft as a clear conscience.
I have hope because we are witnessing more moments of creative resistance by regular people who are finding their voice. My hero of the year is a young woman from Casper, Wyoming named Britt Boril.
The Wyoming legislature recently passed a law that “preferred pronouns could not be compelled,” because we all know that being asked to call someone “they” is the most pressing problem in our nation right now. So they passed this ignorant law saying you cannot compel someone else to refer to you by a specific pronoun.
After the law was passed, in a Zoom call with Wyoming state senator Tim French, a woman named Britt Boril addressed Senator Tim French as “Madam Chairwoman.” French interrupted her to say that she should call him “Mr. Chairman” and she replied: “I cannot be compelled to use your preferred pronouns. You just passed a law saying so.”
He said again, “I’m asking you to call me Chairman French.”
“Madame Chairwoman, you just passed a law saying preferred pronouns cannot be compelled speech,” Britt Boril said.
And just like that, I had a new hero.
So one more thing that gives me hope is spunky people with a sense of humor. They remind us that the battle for decency and democracy needn’t be all somber and serious. More hearts and minds are won by wit and creativity, which we need to remember, lest we become joyless scolds. We Quakers too easily descend into scolding doom-sayers. We might well be right, but humor wins friends. There’s a reason some of the more effective opponents of the Trump regime are Jimmy Kimmel and Steven Colbert and South Park.
Humor is always our friend.
If Abraham Lincoln could tell funny stories during the Civil War, you and I can and must find room for humor today. One of my favorite Lincoln stories was shown during Steven Spielberg’s movie Lincoln. Perhaps you remember it.
John Adams was the first American ambassador to England after the Revolutionary War. The British were still bitter about their loss and wanted to antagonize Adams, so placed a portrait of George Washington in the privy.
While Adams was deep in negotiations with the Brits, Adams excused himself to use the bathroom. The Brits snickered and waited, hoping for a reaction, but when Adams returned to the room, he didn’t say a word about it.
They left the portrait where it was but were perplexed by John Adam’s indifference. Finally, after a few days, they asked him if he had seen the painting of George Washington in the privy.
Adams smiled and said, “I can think of no more appropriate place for that portrait, since nothing would scare the shit out of a British man as well as General George Washington.”
When I heard that story, my respect for John Adams grew, as did my appreciation for humor.
Humor is not only indicative of our emotional well-being, it reveals our spiritual condition. Remember Dwight Eisenhower’s wide and welcome grin? The infectious humor of John F. Kennedy when he told reporters his father wouldn’t pay for a landslide. The quick and easy smile of Barack Obama?
But have you noticed how Donald Trump is only happy when someone is being ridiculed? What does that say about his interior life, about his soul? What does it say about the two most heavily guarded men in the world, Donald Trump and JD Vance, when they summon President Zelinkski to the Oval Office, a man whose nation has been invaded by a murderous thug, and blame him for the tragedy his country has suffered?
We have many weapons in our arsenal. The vote, the rule of law, the courts, and U.S. representatives and senators, and governors who will not bend the knee to King Trump. But remember that what people like Donald Trump fear most is our humor. It is a tool of resistance they do not understand since they do not possess it themselves. Employ it as often as you are able. Bombard the MAGA movement with wit. This is especially important for those of us on the progressive side of the aisle. We often think every dispute is a matter of life and death. But we must not give the impression that life with us is a cheerless, gloomy slog. People are drawn to joy. If they don’t find it among us, they’ll look elsewhere. Donald Trump draws followers in the same manner garbage draws flies, attracting those persons charmed by his stench. Let’s you and I put our hope in humor, in courage and good humor, which stand in opposition to the hateful gloom of Donald Trump.
Times like this call for clarity. Sometimes people will talk about this administration but never mention the names Trump, Miller, Noem, or Vance. While I value tact and diplomacy, when someone is intent on destroying our democracy, then we must, as a matter of integrity, name names. Let no one ever have to guess how we feel about these corrupt and joyless bullies.
When the Quaker Susan B. Anthony was young, she was told by her male schoolteacher that “a girl needs to know how to read the Bible and count her egg money, nothing more.” As it says in the Bible, it pissethed her off, and sparked her passion for equal rights. She went on to become a teacher. In 1846 Anthony, then a 26-year-old school headmistress, began campaigning for equal pay for female teachers. In 1851, she met the woman’s rights advocate, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and they began touring the nation arguing the case for women’s suffrage. Anthony even voted in the 1872 presidential election and was arrested and taken before a judge who fined her $100. She stood before the judge, smiled kindly, then said in a voice of steel, “I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.” And she never did.
Our nation will be saved by those people who will not cooperate with evil, who with joy in their hearts, and purpose in their steps, will not permit themselves or anyone else to be diminished or demeaned. The dour and angry serpents of the world have held the reins of power far too long.
Let’s you and I look to the wise and joyful lovers of the world, those who, having eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, know tyranny when they see it, and will not let it stand. This is what gives me hope—the bright, brave, and joyful people, who are everywhere to be found in our nation, and will lead us out of this desert to our promised land.
The writer Anaïs Nin wrote, “Life shrinks or expands in proportion with one’s courage.” So, friends, be brave and go forth in good cheer. Awaken each morning determined to pop the balloons of pomposity and pretension. It is the work of saints to counter ugliness with laughter, to oppose tyranny with joy, to every day adorn ourselves with happiness and hope, until cruelty is exhausted.