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.

The point of teaching children about the Nazis and the Segregationists can’t just be to make heroes of the Dietrich Bonhoeffers and the Rosa Parkses of an earlier time, and it shouldn’t stop at provoking thoughts of “What would I do in that situation?”

Education must point out to young people the ways in which they are in that situation and equip them to resist it.

Where is this coming from? Watch John Oliver’s commentary about segregated schools.

 

Adam Grant wants you to stop trying to play Devil’s Advocate, and I’m totally with him.

Be divergent, please. Go against the grain. Speak your contrary view. But please believe what you’re saying. Play acting a disagreement for the sake of diversifying the pool of opinion is both ineffective and annoying.

Nobody benefits from the person who pipes up with, “Just to play Devil’s Advocate here, but . . . ” That’s because we don’t listen very carefully when we know you don’t really care. Sure, it’s impressive that you can parrot the opposite opinion, but if you don’t really believe it your lack of conviction only forestalls the prevailing decision. And not only that, but you’re not winning yourself the protection from criticism you think you are. The Devil’s Advocate is trying to manipulate us and we know it. We don’t like it. We even resent it.

If you see things differently than the rest of us, please say so. Please argue forcefully for your perspective. If you don’t, though, save us the Kabuki act of playing Devil’s Advocate. It’s not helpful.

Somebody needs to make a proposal. We can show off our analytical acumen for hours, but until somebody suggests a way forward nothing is going to change. Of course, nobody wants to be the person whose idea flopped; it’s much easier to who goes along. That person washes his hands of a bad outcome. “Wasn’t my idea.”

That’s not the person you want to be working with, though. So make a proposal. Advance an overture. Suggest a strategy. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs at least one verb.