what are we building?

and other questions for moments of despair

Maybe it's because Nex reminds me of my kid. Maybe it's because, for months, I've witnessed children torn apart limb by limb by my tax dollars. Maybe it's because I've been isolated in our guest room for six days, wondering if I will be left permanently disabled from COVID-19 in a country and society that discards disabled folx. Maybe these are reasons it feels like too much. Like we cannot go on like this. Like I cannot go on.

It's turning spring here. From the porch, I can see the first flowers pushing through the still-cold earth. My favorite magnolia tree at our neighborhood park is budding, soon it will be drenched in gorgeous pink blooms.

Women in Gaza give birth into genocide. In the US, kindergarteners are slaughtered at their desks. Nonbinary students are beaten to death by their classmates. Mass graves are found behind police stations.

Younger versions of me found comfort in the season of Lent, of life to death to life, of death being another hello. Spring subtly coming alive would have calmed my spiraling rage and nervous system.

I am no longer that person.

I know people celebrating Lent are the same people celebrating genocide are the same people voting for trans-phobic legislators are the same cowardly people marching behind masks.

Some of you are more offended by the above paragraph than the genocide, the deadly transphobic rhetoric peddled from your pulpits, the Neo-Nazis marching in Nashville.

There is so much to dismantle, tear down, uproot.

My spiritual director helps me see that while recognizing all violence as systemic—and believing there are better ways to be human together!—is a much-needed gift, it is also a burden. So to not drown in the overwhelm, in the systemic depravity of it all, she says, I must ground myself in concrete action, in acts of collective creating.

Yes, capitalism is crushing.
What am I building?

Yes, death is everywhere.
Who am I building with?

Yes, authoritarianism/white supremacy/transphobia runs rampant.
How am I creating a world where everyone has what they need to thrive can emerge in its place?

I spent the better part of a decade trying to convince mostly white mostly Christians of the inherent dignity of every life. (The irony!) I gave that up several years ago¹—I make no arguments here. I'd rather spend this one wild and precious life ushering in a more liveable planet for the most marginalized among us.

So, Dear Reader, what are you building? Who are you building with? How are you creating a world of thriving? (Please do share in the comments.)

In full transparency, my overwhelm stems in large part from my inability to answer these questions myself. For a myriad of reasons ranging from moving across the country to getting divorced to leaving Christian spaces to my kids' involvement with the criminal legal system to being a single parent, etc. I do not feel meaningfully connected to a collective of co-creators.

I am so fucking sick of (the need for marginalized folxes) resilience. But also, smart people (not Brene Brown) have proven that social connection is the buoy that keeps us afloat and that the most fortified form of resilience is our connection to one another. We need each other.

Many people have reminded us that we owe Gaza / trans folx / our children our endurance. We do. And so much more.

For me, and maybe you too, endurance comes from being part of the collective, from co-creating a world none of us have seen yet dare to imagine. It will not bring back the many lives/universes lost—we must reckon with that—and, we must fight like hell for the living.

For Nex. For Gaza. For all of us.

1. This is not the same as shutting down hate when we see it in person, speaking truth to power, calling out or in racist/transphobic people in our lives, or being an active bystander wherever we are. We are never giving these things up.