Before you blow up the system, ask yourself three questions.

1. Is the system really the problem? Should my anger be directed at something else? The people who are goading me on to pull the pin, what do they stand to gain from a system reduced to rubble?
2. Who is this system even for? It’s not working for me right now, for sure. I’m not getting the things I need, the things I used to get. But who is getting what they need from the system as it stands? Wealthy people? Poor people? Disenfranchised or privileged people? The people who are working to preserve the system, what do they stand to lose if it goes up in smoke?
3. What comes next? After I have flexed my muscles for destruction, what is it that I dream of building? Am I even thinking past the demolition?

Blowing up the system may still be what you want to do, but if you’ve asked these questions you can rest easy in your reasons and minimize the time between clearing rubble and putting up scaffolding.

“If they’re shooting at you, you know you’re doing something right.”

I’ve seen every episode of The West Wing, and that is my favorite line from any of them. I’ve used it in more than one sermon, and, since the bleak dawn of Wednesday morning, it keeps coming to mind. As I listen to podcasts and read papers trying to explain America’s election of an unapologetic misogynist and racist, Andrew Macintosh from technical support is emerging as my source of solace.

 

What Tuesday revealed was hiding in plain sight for at least eight years: tens of millions of our compatriots resent the change in America that elevated an African American to its highest elected office and that unapologetically pursued an agenda of marriage equality for LGBT persons, deferred deportations for undocumented migrants, affordable health care for the uninsured, and stricter regulations on carbon emissions for the sake of the climate. President Obama has stood for multiracial leadership and a more collaborative posture towards the rest of the world, and for many, many citizens of this country, that is loathsome.

Good.

I wonder how we would assess the impact of the past eight years if the champions of a crusading, white, male-driven hegemony had not been upset by it. I wonder if making enemies among those whose vision of America is stuck in the post WWII era culture and economics is the worst thing you could achieve as a progressive. I don’t think it is.

Yes, we will have to learn to work together. Many of the gleeful victors of this election are not persuadable (if you love David Duke . . . ), but many more are. If the gains for inclusion and equality that have been made since ’08 are erased in a stroke over the next four years, then this observation will provide little solace. But it feels like, of all the emotions stampeding over the bodies of the vanquished this week, perhaps we should add satisfaction that what we are working on is worthy of such opposition.

If they’re shooting at you, you know you’re doing something right.

Nobody said this was going to be easy. Progress does not breed more progress, but reaction. Take it on the chin. Let it sink in: millions of your compatriots are attracted to a strong man with ugly manners and hateful rhetoric whose main appeal is that he “speaks his mind.” Or, rather, millions of your compatriots prefer that strong man to a woman  with 30 years of public service and concrete plans to help children and the poor.

Time to get to work.

Make beautiful things. Connect with your fellow humans. Listen. Care.

Resist the siren call of victimhood, the sweet whistle of rage, the adrenaline of scapegoating. Nobody promised us an unimpeded path to a better world. We have to fight for it.

Now’s when we find out what we’re made of.

This is not the first Trump-elect post I’ve written. The first, which urged resolve, got pushed back to tomorrow. After I wrote it and tried unsuccessfully to sleep, my resolve crumbled and the anger came through. So this is the angry post.

It’s not okay.

It’s not the end. It’s not a calamity (yet). It’s not the end of the Republic.

But it’s not okay.

A plurality of the American electorate has embraced a radical xenophobic nationalist who openly disdains racial minorities and people with disabilities and who boasts of assaulting women.

That’s not okay.

It’s also not okay that he has zero experience leading public institutions and has expounded barely a single concrete policy proposal; nor that he hid his financial records from the public, something no modern Presidential candidate has done; nor that he has promised to prosecute his political foes.

Not okay, not okay, not okay.

But back to the first part, the xenophobia and misogyny. Mostly the misogyny. My wife, a feminist from birth and a badass super professional, sobbed herself to sleep tonight, because when our eight year-old daughter awakes in a few hours she will face heartbreak like she’s never known; she watched the debates–she heard the things Trump said about women–and she went to bed certain that there weren’t enough Americans who would tolerate, much less vote for, such a person for him to become President. It falls to us to tell her she was wrong about that, that we were wrong, that many, many people were wrong about who this country is.

That part’s actually okay. I can say I was wrong. She needs to learn the world isn’t what you think when you’re in the third grade (I was her age when the Challenger exploded, and that event helpfully altered my view of my country and the cost of its achievement). She can see her parents on the losing side of something. All of that is okay.

But it’s not okay that today over half her compatriots have thrown in with a man who calls women “fat” and “ugly” and, when they accuse him of assault, not attractive enough to merit the offense. It’s not okay that the country she and her fellow third grade schoolgirls are inheriting is one where millions upon millions of citizens cast their lot with such a man.

It’s just not okay.

Election Day is like Christmas or Easter, if you work in church ministry: it’s circled on the calendar, there’s a huge buildup, and you spend the days leading up to it focusing so intently on it that the world may as well end when it’s over.

But the world doesn’t end when it’s over.

The youth retreat you’re speaking at still starts on Friday night.

Youth group plans still need to be developed before Sunday.

You still have to preach.

Days that are a Big Deal serve for a season as repositories for all of our anxiety and stress about the world and our work. That’s not all bad. That stress is a goad to good work and deepened commitment. But what happens to our commitment after the day passes?

Come tomorrow, no matter the outcome of today’s election, I want to work on stuff that matters.

 

Chalk this up to learning:

Glossy curriculum is uninspiring, and mechanically applying it feels like a bad use of your training and ideas, but if you depend on a team of volunteers to lead your students, volunteers who haven’t been to seminary and who have day jobs and kids and aging parents, then tinkering with the glossy curriculum each week so that it feels more like “You,” only makes things harder for them.

If you’re going to tinker, maybe do it early, all at once.

If you’re in the Confirmation class at my church, your best bet is to come to as many Sunday gatherings as possible, to join in the retreats, and to attend the outings. You see more that way, and you have more fun.

I doubt, however, that any two Confirmation dates will have identical attendance over the course of the entire year. This is but one of multiple competing commitments young people have: church, school, sports, family. You get the idea.

It seems wise to leave a trail of breadcrumbs.

You can’t live on breadcrumbs, but they can point you to bread. I’ve started designing my weekly sessions using shareable media and posting them to the church website. They’re still better enjoyed in person, with the rest of the community. But who knows? Maybe they’ll lead there.

It’s awesome to say, “I was there.” When something historic happened; when something unexpected happened; when the thing that couldn’t happen happened–it’s thrilling to say, “I was there.”

“I was there” is only an appetizer, though. The entree is “I helped it happen.” Sports doesn’t allow that for fans, but almost everything else that matters does. Elections. Community transformation. Work projects. More than occupying a seat on the bench when the big event goes down, most of life is an invitation to be on the field playing a role. That’s the entree.

Helping others play a role is dessert. “I will help you make it happen“: is there anything better?

 

I have been investing far too much of my limited attention and emotional energy to the election the past several weeks. I’m listening to multiple podcasts each day, from the partisan to the journalistic. I’m reading the daily paper and checking my phone constantly with the expectation of some new bombshell revelation.

I need to stop.

Caring is not the same thing as worrying. Caring takes action–voting, canvassing, making calls. Worrying ferrets through the news in search of doom. Worrying studies up on every possible angle and launches arguments with friends who have learned less about emails or taxes or foundations or hacks.

Let’s try to worry less about the things we can’t control. If you care enough, go do something.

I have not planned or organized a youth lock-in for nearly a decade. Lock-ins weren’t part of the history where I served from 2008 thru 2015, and even though I threw one during my first year there the idea never really stuck. We did some overnights with the 30 Hour Famine, but those weren’t true lock-ins–fun wasn’t purely the point.

Nope. No lock-in for me since 2008.

It would be criminal to not host a youth lock-in where I serve currently. The location and facility practically beg for it. So last Friday was the Junior High Lock-In.

Here’s my list of three winners and two losers from the event.

Winner: volunteer recruitment. 

My church supports a robust community of adults who volunteer with youth, and the need to invite the uninitiated into that community is constant. Since they don’t require a weekly commitment, lock-ins are a golden opportunity for prospective volunteers to get a feel for what youth ministry is like. I had four adult volunteers, and only one of them was a regular. Two were parents of youth and one was not. Two were participating in their first ever youth group activity.

Winner: recreation.

For me, this is one of the most explicit purposes of a lock in. Get the kids in the building, close the doors, and play until they drop. Grog. Scatterball. Sardines. Ships And Sailors. Seriously, lock-ins are a great excuse to grow your compilation of games by trying out new ones along with ones you already know. There were some scraped elbows, so I was glad we had our first aid kit handy, because kids were eager to get bandaged up and back in the game.

Winner: community.

It’s not perfect for this, but the lock-in is uniquely suited to initiate and enhance meaningful relationships among youth. Being together in a space dedicated to fun is good for friendships. Kids let their guard down a bit. By midnight, what you see is what you get. In a good way.

Loser: planning.

I wanted to prove (to myself, mostly) that I could still hack a lock-in, so I planned the whole thing myself. The schedule, the volunteer recruitment, the food, the games, the consent forms, the flyers–everything. As the night went on, I kept seeing pieces of the program that might have been more creative, portions of the planning that could have been smoothed out by their being planned by someone other than me, maybe even some youth. Who knows? We might have even had a theme. Yeah, the next lock-in needs more collaborative planning.

Loser: health.

Pizza, soda, chips, candy, and cookies are a recipe for awfulness that comes out perfect every time. This one is related to planning, since junk food is the easiest thing to procure if the menu is only one of thirteen things you’re working on. Nobody–least of all the 11 year-old–feels very good after imbibing the lock-in diet.

Also, even though we had a lights out time and sleeping was part of the agenda, sleep deprivation is inescapable. This comes on a Friday, at the end of a week of school, so kids are pretty sapped already. One youth burst into tears the moment her parents picked her up in the morning. She wasn’t upset. She was simply exhausted. I’m not sure what a more healthy lock-in looks like in this regard, but health is one aspect that seems to be begging for some experimentation.

I don’t love lock-ins, but I appreciate their value as a vehicle for some really beneficial things, both for youth and adults.