Vignettes: Seeking Hope & Calm

Two friends gather at a coffee shop: intuitively, they both whisper when talking about Ice tactics. Both acknowledge that it looks very much like kidnappings.

A friend of mine suggests that I take a break from all this thinking about politics, a gentle reminder to rest in God.

At a holiday feast, a Hispanic woman announces her plans to self-deport.

News broke today that the United States and Israel executed strikes at multiple sites in Iran, and Iran has started retaliations. My mom reads the headlines, and I read my Bible.

Earlier this week, two babies were born, a day apart. Life continues as families and love grow.

The weather turns. Some states get buried in snow; some see an early taste of Spring.

There goes a newlywed, and there’s a new marital engagement that has been recently announced.

My interest in politics is newish, and even though I have invested much time, energy, and effort in reading and learning to formulate my conclusions, politics is not the only aspect of life.

However, since I last wrote, I feel I can better articulate why worship/fellowship has been hard. I feel a sense of corporate national shame. Certain actions of this administration don’t make me feel proud, and I feel they bring dishonor to God. But growing up, the Christian discipleship and teaching I received focused more on individual guilt and shame. And even though I know that Jesus Christ, the cross, and His resurrection is the answer for all shame, I’m not accustomed to feeling this sense of corporate national shame. And this sort of shame doesn’t get addressed much at church.

I can’t prescribe any remedy for anyone else struggling with the decisions and policies being put forth by the current administration. But I can share what helps me.

• Scripture, Hymns and some Christian songs, prayer – this helps to keep me centered
• I actually don’t focus all of my time, thought, and energy on politics. I don’t watch the news every single night. I read other books about different things – fiction, historical fiction. A book I finished last weekend is The Frozen River, about a midwife. I read the book thinking it was fiction and was surprised to learn, when reading the author’s note, that Martha Ballard was a real person. Over the past few months, I’ve also watched The Sopranos series.
• Exercise
• Art – even though I’m an amateur at best.

Likewise, I can’t prescribe how anyone engages with politics, but I’ve come to believe it’s important. I can, however, recommend resources that I come across.

• Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians by Lee C. Camp focuses on how Christianity and politics intersect in the American context. The main goal, repeated often, is to lean and grow into a Christianity that is neither left, nor right, nor religious.
  • Lee C. Camp also hosts a podcast No Small Endeavor.
• Mr. Nobody Against Putin is a documentary nominated to receive an Oscar for Best Documentary. This documentary already won Best Documentary at the BAFTA awards, hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. The documentary contains footage secretly recorded in Russia as the war with Ukraine got underway. It documents how Russian propaganda made its way into the school system. Why is this documentary worth watching? It was available to the rest of the world in 2025, but not the USA, because they couldn’t find a distributor willing to take it on. But it’s available now, but who knows if it will continue to be available. You will need to turn on the subtitles.
  • Mr. Nobody Against Putin Q&A with Directors David Borenstein & Pasha Talankin | Rafael Film Center. This link takes you to a YouTube Q&A about the above documentary. It was interesting to watch after seeing the documentary.
• Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for Our Common Life by Makota Fujimura is a book I’m still reading but it’s so good already. Right away, I loved the descriptions and definitions of hope by Mark Labberton in the foreward:
  • In a world that is at once beautiful and pained, glorious and tortured, thriving and anguished, many ask: Is there hope? What does it look like? Where and what is it? Hope, first of all, must be realistic. That is, hope can be hope only if it admits that which is darkest while urging toward the light. Nothing glib, or blind, or deflective toward the depth of despair could be a contender for hope. If hope has not first been silenced before the profundity of evil and loss, then such a two-dimensional offering is more scandalous than fruitful.

This is a shorter post as I am somewhat at a loss as today has been a heavier day in US history. But take heart, Jesus, our hope, entered into our darkness to show us the way to find a whole new way of being.