Never Go Back to "Normal"!

This gets at a reality I have taught about for years. Stable and normal do not exist and never have. We are always in transition. Theologically I suppose a case can be made that the longing for a good quality of stability and normalcy is a yearning for the eternal reign of God. But in the here and now, not to change is to be stagnant. We want our children to grow up and not remain perpetual infants. We want to keep growing and learning. When what we have imagined to be "normal" is disrupted, we talk about getting "back to normal," but that is a fictitious illusion. Yes, we will be aware that the current situation has changed us in unexpected (and not always welcome) ways. When we try to go "back to normal" we idolize a fictionalized, romanticized nostalgia and evade embracing present reality. Whether parents of college students keeping a child's bedroom for when they return home, or a politician promising to bring back 1955, the new reality is relentless. Failing to recognize and adapt does lots of damage. So I am learning what it means to be a 73 year old caring for my wife with Alzheimer's and her 93 year old father locked down in a senior living residence, just as I learned to be a college student, husband, father, pastor. I had never done all of those things before. In the same way we will all need to learn to live in a new reality we have never experienced before. If we try to force a return to the old normal, we will break ourselves and each other.

Issues to Address Together

I for one am tired of hurling insults across the political aisle as though using these as curse words actually explains anything: communist – fascist, socialist – greed monger, far left – far right, liberal – conservative. I have lost all patience with the zero-sum game that refuses to work with those with divergent philosophies and presuppositions. I reject the idea that because we can’t solve everything, we can’t make many things better. I am not doctrinaire about much of anything, even pragmatism. But I do believe that if we start to work together on how to address the real life issues that affect everyone. I believe that insights from competing mindsets can be brought to bear in positive ways on these issues if we care more about helping each other than about winning. You may add to this list of things we could and should work on together.

·         Violence

·         Health care

·         Immigration that is just and humane

·         Climate change and environment

·         Persistent racial injustice

·         Sexual harassment and assault

·         Respect and pay for women and girls

·         Abortion that is not all or nothing but reduction without shame

·         Poverty and homelessness

·         Veterans – health care, housing, suicide

·         Clean energy

A parody on Number 14 with appreciation to James David Audlin.

 All the people raised a loud cry, “O that we had stayed in the 1950s with the certainties of the Korean War, segregation, and flight to suburbia. Let us choose a leader and go back to 1955.” They closed their ears to the assurance, “Do not be afraid of what is next,” and a generation fell in the wilderness.