2020: A Few Reflections

As this most interesting of years comes to an end, I've been doing a lot of reflecting, and a few (unoriginal) thoughts have shaped my thinking. I typically start these blogs with quotes and Bible verses, but today, those come second. This year has been a 12-month period that has allowed us more free time than ever, and I've been more introspective than ever. So enjoy these quotes, and know that these have shaped me this year. I hope they can do the same for you.

#7: "Three thousand times a day, we're told that our hair is wrong, skin is wrong, clothes are wrong, our furniture is wrong, our cars are wrong, we are wrong but that it can all be made right if we just go shopping." -The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard

We have everything at our fingertips, and yet we're at historically high levels of unhappiness and dissatisfaction. We've bought into the lie that if we just had THAT, we'd be happy. And yet, we all know that THAT has never filled the hole of desire. We've got to reclaim contentment, the ability to find joy in what's before us and not what's wrong.

#6: "Listen to me, Corey. Throughout your life, there's gonna be a lot of opportunities that come up, and they're seem great, and they're gonna seem wonderful, and they're going to seem like they make your life a heck of a lot easier. But you have to walk away. And you know, at times, it's gonna be really difficult to do that, but you have to. Because you deserve better." -Boy Meets World

These words have echoed through my ears for more than a decade. We all know life is easier now in so many ways. We can have whatever we want, whenever we want. We live by the mantra, if it's good for me, it's good. "You do you." And yet, we'd be wise to remember the words of Paul, that just because we CAN do something doesn't mean we SHOULD do something. There are times when "no" is the only responsible response.

#5: "I made the mistake of thinking that condemning other people's misdeeds somehow made me virtuous. I'd become, I realized, a member of that class of liberals who allowed themselves to glide by on way too few political gestures and lifestyle concessions and then spent the rest of their energy feeling superior to other people who supposedly don't do as much." -No Impact Man, Colin Beavan

To be honest, this is the most recent book I've read. And I've read a lot in 2020. But this hit me hard. And I don't think it's just true of "liberals." We've girded ourselves in self-righeousness. And by we, I recognize that I can't use that pronoun without including myself. So we point out what others do wrong. It makes us feel like we've done our part. Criticism is the tool of the day. But criticism is not the end of the road. It's a tool I use too often to make me feel like I've done enough. The truth is, too often, we ask for the powers that be to change things without taking the responsibility to institute changes in our own worlds. We push for greener laws from Congress, but we consume at ever rising rates with more disposable packaging than ever. We call on cities to enact more just laws around racial disparities, but how are we giving up our own privileges without being asked to help raise others up? Again, I count myself ever first in this collection of we.

#4:

-Great Dictator

It's true. "We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want." This call was as true 70 years ago as it is today. We have to re-establish our trust in our neighbors. We've got to step away from screens and towards one another. We've got to let go of power and reclaim humility. The desire for power has poisoned our souls, and it's not a Right or Left problem. Our connections are threatened. Our relationships strained. We've got to recapture the capacity to see value and purpose in one another, even (and perhaps especially) if we disagree.

#3: “Jesus was always too busy being faithful to worry about success. I'm not opposed to success; I just think we should accept it only if it is a by-product of our fidelity. If our primary concern is results, we will choose to work only with those who give us good ones.” -Tattoos on the Heart, Greg Boyle

In 2020, the mandate across all sectors was to maintain and grow. Be creative. Be productive. Adapt. Grow engagement. But engagement was never Jesus' goal. Growth wasn't an aim in and of itself. Where we should always begin is, "What do people need?" and how can we participate in what God is doing in the world to bring that healing. Efficiency and engagement were never Kingdom values. In fact, the Kingdom of God is INefficient most days. Grace is in it for the long haul. Real problems demand more than 260-character tweets. They demand more than streaming hits. Grace compels us to roll up our sleeves and slow down.

#2: "If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!" "If," Rudyard Kipling

I've hiked to this poem being read by Ray Fiennes on repeat. I've spent time rehabbing my wife's old house while its words floated through the air over and over again. There's not a single line or stanza that doesn't perfectly express my hopes for what I might become. We're not finished products. And if I'm not one, then neither are you, and neither are they. That's the meaning of grace. And the Jungle Book author so captures the struggle of growing in 2020, even if he was writing it a century ago.

#1:

A Troll in Central Park

I turn to this song more than likely any other in existence. It's silly and from a movie that has long been lost to the annuls of irrelevance. But it's hope encapsulates all I've felt about 2020, and most of my life. Sometimes, when all else feels lost, I too "like to close my eyes so my heart can plainly see right through the way things are clear to the way they ought to be."