Welcome to NETWORK’s 40 days of Lent, “A Time to Pray, A Time to Act.” As I was reflecting on this time, I thought of two scriptural references. The first was Jesus’ withdrawal to the desert for 40 days before he began his public ministry. In this very challenging political time I believe that we need to engage in a intense spiritual practice of listening to the Spirit in our midst so that the new might emerge. I know that we cannot do “business as usual.” But it is less clear to me what the new approaches to this political chaos should be. Let us pray and listen together to the Spirit in these 40 days ahead.

The second scripture that I thought of was the story of the Exodus. In the Exodus the Jewish people wandered for 40 years sometimes with a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Now we only have 40 days and not 40 years, but I realized the other day that each day feels a bit like a year. We wander without a strong sense of how we as a nation are a community. We complain about “Why can’t it be like it was?” In short we are lost and reliant on God’s generosity to see us through.

So welcome to a Lent of prayer and action: listening to the Spirit and calling Congress. This is what will create the common good. May we be faithful in the journey.

We have been hearing a lot about resistance in these early days of the Trump administration. In fact, on the first full day of his presidency millions of women, men, and children organized and joined together to stand for justice in the streets.

We have also been hearing a lot of questions about what comes next. How does this organic expression of outrage and concern for equality and the common good become an effective movement?  How do we take advantage of this moment in history to effect change, stop the carnage of unjust social policies—to repurpose a phrase from President Trump’s inaugural address—and promote justice for all, especially people who are poor and marginalized?

Whatever comes next, it is crucial that we develop an ethic of resistance that is grounded in human dignity and right relationship. Otherwise, we face the danger of recreating and repeating negative cycles of violent and dehumanizing language and actions.

Relationship is key to resistance—we are first and foremost human beings after all, created to be in relationship with one another.  It is our compassion for other human beings and our earth community that compels us to resist.  An ethic of resistance requires a firm commitment to hold fast to the truth of human dignity of all people and the integrity of creation, to lament the unjust social structures and social norms which foster and perpetuate dehumanizing and earth-destroying policies, and to seek to heal the relationships distorted by social sin.

In fact, we would all do well to read up on the history of resistance to social sin. Resistance is not futile, but neither is it easy. The Christian tradition of resistance begins with Jesus, and think of where his path of resistance led.  Jesus resisted dehumanizing social norms, created a wide web of relationship, and engaged in liberating action for the oppressed.  In the centuries since, Christians have followed in his footsteps and resisted social sin and injustice.  Human communities have even managed to resist extreme expressions of social sin, such as slavery and the Nazi holocaust. Please God, do not let our current situation reach such levels, but we must do all we can to resist even the most remote possibility of such extreme social sin emerging from the fog of fear, distrust, and isolationism.

In the words of Pope Francis, we must resist the globalization of indifference. “The globalization of indifference, which today burdens the lives of so many of our brothers and sisters, requires all of us to forge a new worldwide solidarity and fraternity capable of giving them new hope and helping them to advance with courage amid the problems of our time and the new horizons which they disclose and which God places in our hands.”[1]

The end goal of resistance should be right relationship.  To reach that goal we must carefully peel away the layers of disconnection which have been created through social sin.  The first layer of resistance is what has been happening in the collective awakening all around us.  We need to remove our own blinders not only to the existence of dehumanizing and earth-destroying policies and practices around us, but also to the ways that we ourselves are enmeshed within these unjust structures.  Only then can we work with integrity to socialize this awareness by raising the consciousness of others.

The next layer of resistance is an emotional one—lament.  Our critical consciousness must lead us to lament the reality of the benefits we receive at the cost of the heavy burdens born by others.  Because our actions of resistance take place within the dominant culture, within what Cynthia Moe-Lobeda calls a “paradox of privilege,”[2] we must lament before we can seek truth and justice in solidarity. Fr. Bryan Massingale believes that such lamentation “has the power to challenge the entrenched cultural beliefs that legitimate privilege.”[3] It is a crucial step toward expanding the web of relationship to include all persons, especially marginalized people.  The encouraging movement towards intersectionality within the emerging resistance movement is a positive step in this direction.

The final layer of resistance is to shift from inaction to action from within your sphere of influence to heal the relationships distorted by social sin.  Resistance actions are not and cannot be limited to grand scale marches and demonstrations.  Our daily lives as ordinary citizens, neighbors, and consumers are filled with individual choices that hold potential for collective power. Indeed, the history of social movements illustrates the collective power of resistance to social evil and its ability to effect lasting social change.

[1] Pope Francis, 2015 World Peace Day Message, no. 6

[2] Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda, Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecologocial-Economic Vocation (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2013),  61

[3] Massingale, “The Systemic Erasure of the Black/Dark Skinned Body in Catholic Ethics,” in Catholic Theological Ethics, Past, Present, and Future: the Trento Conference, ed. James F. Keenan (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011), 121.

I have been challenged by the new Trump Administration to find the right place for NETWORK in our effort to create an economy of inclusion. Part of me wants to resist every move, every nomination, every tweet, every lie, and every outrageous utterance. But I know that such absolute resistance, such “fighting against,” will reinforce the very behavior that I am resisting. It will lead to hate countering hate, and it won’t work. What is called for is something new.

Both before and after the election, I talked with some ardent Trump supporters to try to understand them. What I have come to see is that for many, if not most, their support for Mr. Trump comes from the fact that they feel betrayed by politicians and frightened for their children. They feel they have “worked hard and played by the rules” but not gotten ahead. They are struggling just as their parents did, or maybe things are even a little harder for them. Beneath their disappointment, I have come to see that there is shame for them in not living up to their  expectations.

This shame leads to anger directed at “business as usual.” They don’t care that Mr. Trump lacks any political experience. In fact, they like that because they feel betrayed by politicians. What they are not seeing is that it is conservative economic policies of “trickle-down” economics that are the heart of our ever growing income and wealth disparity.

Some of these shamed and angry voters have supported these policies for years, but do not understand that they privilege the top economic brackets and actually hurt everyone else. I am tempted at times to just “shake them” to try to get them to wake up to the consequences of their choices.

We are challenged by the Gospel, however, to do this work differently. We are challenged to fight for a vision of who we are called to be in our nation and our world. To create this vision we need to enter into a contemplative space where we let our guard down and listen to the Spirit (or what I call the wee small voice within) and then act out of that centered space.

This deep listening is risky business because it often calls on each of us to change in some way. It isn’t just about how “they” need to change. We need to say to ourselves that it is okay to be nervous about silence and listening, but we can’t let our reticence stop us. It is this very deep contemplation that is desperately needed in our nation right now.

I’ve discovered that this deep listening leaves me open to hear the stories of others grasp the reality around me in new ways, for example, my story of listening to Trump voters. It also allowed me to understand what Thomasina in Indianapolis meant when she told me she wasn’t going to vote because she didn’t want to hurt our country. She didn’t know how to choose when all she knew was negativity about both candidates, and she thought the only ethical choice was not voting at all! Deep listening lets me take in another’s experience and understand it in a new way. It is the first building block of community that we are in dire need of in our nation.

So in my worry and terror about the policies that we are going be advocating against over the next four years, I believe that we are being to a new level of engagement and action. Only love can cast out hate. We need to listen deeply and then act in love. Hard as it will be, we are called to take a radical step into the deep listening that can reveal the new. It feels like groping in the dark in very challenging times, but my experience over and over is that we are not left orphans. The words are given when they are needed. Community is nourished in this very struggle. We learned from the Vatican censure that despite pain and fear, staying faithful to our mission allows the Spirit to make something new…like a Bus.

Let us begin to advocate strongly together, but also begin a time of “deep listening.” Let us share with each other what we hear. Then we are prepared to lift up a vision of the 100% where all can work together to heal our nation. For such a challenging time we have been called. Let us respond as the prophet did:

Speak O Holy One, your servants are listening.