When Tomorrow Feels Like It's Already Unraveling

Lessons From a Decade Spent Living at the Edge of Autocracy

Have you ever pulled a few threads and all of a sudden the fabric in your hands all but falls apart? This moment in history feels like the unraveling has begun.

Context Note: I’m going to be talking about current events in this post. It is political, but not in the partisan sense. It is political in the sense that all things are political if they inform and shape the way we see the world. If you are saturated, or are trying to stay away from such things, feel free to skip this one. But I simply feel I would be remiss if I don’t write about what I am seeing in light of my own lived experience.

Photo by Anastasia Zhenina on Unsplash

I’ve been debating writing about this season we are in. Debating so much, I’ve been looking at my keyboard for a solid week and not been able to get anything else out.

Y’all know how much I guard this space for wonder and goodness and beauty.

I share my personal experiences, but have largely stayed away from posts that could come across as overtly political.

But in a season where everything is political, and the world feels like it’s unraveling at the edges… not writing about these things seems hollow and disingenuous.

Wonder and beauty and goodness, kindness and art and poetry and breathing… the act of taking up space on a page or in life… it is all political in some sense ultimately.

Here’s why.

Wonder does not take place in a vacuum as a disembodied concept of an idea floating in the ether.

Wonder has skin on. Wonder is wild and brave and tender and untamed all at the same time.

In this community, we have people from all around the world and all across the spectrum of ideologies, beliefs, and affiliations.

When I say that this is a safe space to be who you are, I mean it.

It is a safe place for you to be here, even if you disagree with me. There are no litmus tests or hoops to jump through, other than a commitment to keeping our conversations kind.

But kind doesn’t mean quiet.

I cannot be silent in the face of what is happening around me in the US. I can’t continue, head down, pretending everything is normal. Even if that is the seemingly safer option.

After much wee-hour wrestling, I feel like not writing from my lived experience would be doing both of us a huge disservice.

Because, friends, I lived in what was once the world’s most failed state for 7 years.

I lived in a part of the world decimated by decades of civil war. I got to live through the transition years of South Sudan becoming the world’s newest geopolitical nation.

And I learned some things along the way.

Having a voice can cost you. But not having one will cost you even more.

That is exactly what abusive power structures bank on.

Our own self-silencing. And I will not be silent.

So, pour a cup of tea. Let’s start with a story.

This Journey Into Wonder Began In the World’s Most Failed State

The moment is etched into my memory. I had 4 blankets tucked around me sitting on a lumpy bed in a sparsely furnished room I was renting in downtown Johannesburg.

It was winter and there was no heat. I could see my breath misting in the faint glow of my computer screen.

I was researching the way to get into a country that was not yet a country. A country that was still in the throws of conflict.

Reading the black and white pixels on my screen, I saw that Sudan was the world’s most failed state in 2006. Top of the list.

This was the place I was moving to, site unseen. A short white woman with one-leg and crutches. With a few hundred dollars in her back pocket. What could possibly go wrong?

For the first 3.5 years, my passport was stamped out of Uganda and back into Uganda with no seeming destination in between. It made international travel super interesting. No, really, I live in the South part of Sudan. See here are my pictures, officer.

It was there in the bush with no running water or electricity, paved roads, banks, or civil policing (in the early days)… I saw the power of small practices to build the resilience needed to handle the pressure of living in a literal war zone.

We can’t make wonder a habit to escape from the world. Wonder at its absolute highest and best gives us what we need to engage the world around us in proactive and purposeful ways.

Sharon McMahon talks about each of us doing “our important work.”

I never in a million years would have imagined the lessons I learned in Africa coming into focus because of the things unfolding in my own home nation here in the USA.

As a student of history, communications, and culture, I am deeply concerned with parallels that are unfolding in the US right now. And the dramatic shift in our foreign policy alignments.

As a daughter of parents who were lifelong civil service workers, the way people are being treated is inexcusable.

As someone who saw the ravages of violent autocracy every single day overseas… I am not ok with the blatant disregard of the rule of law or the flagrant shredding of the Constitution.

As someone who believes in the American experiment and the separation of powers, I find the road we are traveling to potentially disastrous.

As someone who spent 20+ years in the nonprofit sector, I find the willful and even gleeful acts of cruelty and the abuse of human rights towards minorities to be troubling in ways I’m still struggling to find words for.

And as someone who worked for 20 years in and around the high-control, authoritarian faith-based movement that has given rise to the current expression of Christian nationalism, I can tell you that this is neither truly Christian, nor patriotic.

It is about one thing and one thing only. Power.

It cost me everything to walk away from that world 13 years ago, and I certainly will not bow before its influence today.

We are living in perilous times. But the outcomes are not inevitable. At least not yet.

And that is why we have never needed wonder as a practice more.

It is in the middle of history’s darkest nights of pain, loss, and grief, the poets and artists and creatives rise up to tend the broken places and offer their most important work.

Make no mistake.

Creativity is resistance.

Choosing kindness is rebellion.

Seeking beauty when it feels like life wants to crush the hope from our lungs is an act of defiance.

Love took me to a literal war zone to learn from the marginalized a world away. So I sure as heck will stand for the rights of those around me here today.

Even in these moments, each one of us still gets to decide our response.

Love our neighbors, care for our communities, plant gardens, teach art lessons, bake cookies, write poetry, call our representatives, stretch our arms out toward those who are hurting, and our souls to the sunshine.

In the darkness, look for the sky full of stars.

We get to live a better story, right in the face of the dynamics that are trying to force us into compliance with fear and overwhelm.

But beloved, we are not hopeless or helpless.

If my time in South Sudan taught me one thing, it is that…

Hope is stronger than fear.

No one gets to take that from us. No king and no force of empire gets to change who we are.

Not today.

Not ever.

Wonder is a way forward, together.

Thanks for listening and for being here.

You are dearly loved,

Michele