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Living Well In A Season Of Political Strife

Living Well In A Season Of Political Strife

Last updated on: January 12, 2025 at 3:00 am by John Beckett

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Living Well In A Season Of Political Strife 2025-01-11T21:03:38-06:00 John Beckett

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

There’s something special about a season when your favorite sports team is winning. Whether it’s your alma mater or an adopted college (I’ve had one in each of the places I’ve lived), the local football or baseball team, or whatever else grabs your attention, winning makes life better. There’s a sense of optimism – that things are good and going to get better. That optimism holds even if your team loses a game or three, or if they eventually fall in the playoffs. I lived in Atlanta when the Braves were the Team of the 90s. They only won one World Series, but it was still a great time.

You aren’t part of the team. You don’t pitch, bat, field, or even wash the uniforms. But you can feel it, and it has an impact on your outlook on life.

And the opposite is true when your team is losing.

A useful but imperfect metaphor

Politics as team sports is a metaphor, and like all metaphors it’s limited in scope. We have no obligation to support the local teams or even the schools we attend. We do have an obligation to participate in the political process. Sports can influence people’s outlook on life – politics can make tangible impacts on people’s lives, for good or for ill. People occasionally riot over sports (usually after victories, which strikes me as odd) but nations go to war over politics. Put simply, politics are far more important than sports.

But on a day to day basis, they’re much the same.

People who have far more money than you’ll ever see fight over things that look simple on the surface but are incredibly complicated in the details. You have no way to control the outcome. You just have to live with the results.

Maybe that’s a brief moment of sadness when you look at the box score. Or maybe a foul ball hit you in the face and you have broken bones. But whether the results are easy or hard or anywhere in between, you still have to continue with your life. You still have to go to work the next day, to do laundry and cook dinner and take the car for an oil change.

And you still have to figure out how to enjoy life and do something that’s meaningful to you, because while our souls may be immortal our bodies are not, and once a day is gone it’s never coming back.

What are you going to do for the next four years?

Know what’s coming

January 20 is going to be a very bad day, not just because Trump will be President again and because he’s going to talk about how things are terrible and only he can fix it, but because he’s going to issue dozens of executive orders and all of them will be bad. Some will be the kind of business-as-usual change-of-party control, but others will attempt to fundamentally change the structures of the country. Some will be overturned in court, but many will stand.

In his first term much of the federal bureaucracy simply did their jobs, taking pride in serving the people and supporting the Constitution and not catering to the whims of a wannabe dictator. He has plans to change that this time, either legally or by making people so miserable they quit on their own. If you’re a federal employee you have to decide how much you can tolerate and how hard you’re willing and able to fight. You owe the country your service, not your life.

Some Republicans are talking about “shock and awe” in the first hundred days. The first time I heard that phrase was in the Iraq War, when the US and coalition armed forces completely demolished what had been billed as “the fourth largest army in the world” (and then went on to demonstrate that while conquest is easy, control is not – but that’s another topic for another time).

The purpose of shock and awe is to hit an enemy from so many different sides they don’t know how to respond, and ultimately, to break their will to fight. That makes conquering them easy.

Knowing all this is coming doesn’t make it any nicer or less harmful. It does prepare us so we aren’t overwhelmed when it happens.

Know who you are

If you pitch, bat, or field for a political party or movement – or if you wash their uniforms – you’re directly involved in the fight and this post isn’t for you. It’s for the rest of us, who watch the box scores and have to deal with the results.

We are not apathetic. We do not have the wealth and privilege required to “just don’t worry about politics.” We are engaged citizens. But we understand that we aren’t office holders, staff, candidates, or consultants. We have lives outside of politics.

If our baseball team goes on a losing streak, we don’t like it. We feel bad about it. But then we get back to doing what’s important to us.

Things like building a solid life in the ordinary world. Supporting our families and communities. Staying connected to our Gods, ancestors, and spiritual traditions. Enjoying good food, good drink, and good art.

Making good art.

And most importantly, doing the work of our Gods here and now.

I’m not a politician any more than I’m the second baseman for the Texas Rangers. I’m a Druid and a priest. And a witch. I have priestly and witchy work to do, and I cannot allow my very legitimate, very understandable sadness and anger over the current state of American politics (and world politics – the right wing is surging in Europe and other places too) to keep me from doing it.

The problems of America are deeper than Donald Trump

I’ve been saying this since before he secured the first nomination in 2016: Donald Trump is the symptom, not the disease.

The disease is xenophobia, homophobia, and transphobia.

The disease is misogyny.

The disease is fundamentalism and nationalism.

The disease is the lust for money and the lust for power.

The disease cannot be cured with education. That’s the classic liberal error. We think that if everyone could just see the facts, they’d come to the same conclusions as we do. They don’t and they won’t. The MAGA refusal to acknowledge facts is a problem, but the core problem is one of culture and of values.

Laws and regulations can moderate the worst of this. As Martin Luther King Jr. said “the law can’t make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.” Again, we cannot simply give up on politics and the political process.

But the only permanent solution is to change the culture, and that’s a process that requires many people living their values openly over many years. It’s not something that can be fixed with a Blue Wave.

But also, it’s not something that can be stopped by MAGA.

Make taking care of yourself your top priority

You’re no good to anyone if you’re dead, or burned out, or so anxious or depressed you can’t get off the couch.

Limit your news intake, and do your best to stick to actual news, not the outrage-driven clickbait that passes for news.

Avoid prophets of doom. Yes, there will be a midterm election in 2026. Yes, there will be a Presidential election in 2028. The 22nd Amendment isn’t going to be repealed and Democrats will be favored in both elections. They won’t fix everything either, but they can make things less worse.

Maintain your spiritual practice. Pray, meditate, and make offerings. Spend time in Nature. Work magic – and not just political magic. Never forget who you are and what’s most important to you.

Maintain your health. I had a bad year in 2024 and I learned (the hard way, of course) that there is no substitute for adequate sleep. Eat good food, drink plenty of water, and get good exercise.

Plant trees

I mean this metaphorically, but if some of you take it literally that would be just fine.

No one plants a tree expecting to get fruit the same year. Apple trees take 2 to 5 years to start producing fruit, and they may not fully mature for 10 years. Plant trees and care for them now, knowing they’ll bear fruit in the future.

Nobody likes to hear it, but it’s still true: political progress takes time. Cultural progress takes time. That’s not an excuse for standing around doing nothing. It is reason to not abandon the process and give up because some people are trying to take us backwards.

Do the work of your Gods

I was planning The Call of Cernunnos months ago and thinking about it years ago. I would be doing it now even if the election had gone the other way. But honestly, this couldn’t be coming at a better time.

What better way to move the culture in the right direction than to help people learn about one of the many Gods, who is a God of Nature, and to help spread his values and his virtues?

Or perhaps, to remind people that the Morrigan is still active in our world. She calls us to reclaim our sovereignty and to live our lives our way, not as the politicians and advertisers and preachers of hate tell us we should live them.

Or, as Imbolc approaches, to tell people about Brighid and her work to provide hospitality to all who need it. The Morrigan, Hekate, and Odin seem to get all the publicity, but Brighid has been quietly gathering priestesses, priests, and devotees to do her sacred work in these difficult times.

I’m a priest, not an evangelist. My job isn’t so much to spread the good news of the many Gods, but to serve as a resource for those who hear them and are trying to figure out how to respond.

This is my calling – what’s yours?

Let nothing keep you from it.

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