Yes. So convicting to read your reflections on learning to sit in the ache, not bright-side it away, and embracing lament. This seems to be such an underdeveloped muscle for many of us. I’d love to know if and how those you’re serving are teaching you about lament.

And why are violence and injustice so easy, efficient, and generationally destructive?

Thanks for offering this, Brandon. It strengthens my resolve for the slow, communal work of joining God in the undoing and remaking. It’s work that’s worth our lives.

It depends on the day and where my head and my heart are, honestly. I do have some places where I am “doing” things built into my life. I volunteer weekly at Peer Seattle, which is a peer model recovery org that focuses on the LGBTQ+ community- I just sit at the front desk and check people in and chat with them, but it is encouraging to me to see people who are actively seeking recovery in their lives. It gives me hope that the folks I’m working with can move forward- that it is a possibility. Having places that help me feel hope is something that is protective to keep me from falling super deep into despair.

But also, I’m learning that there is a value to sitting in the ache, and not trying to bright-side my way out of it. I’m learning lament, and how to move through it and let it fuel my work, but having boundaries so that it doesn’t walk it’s way right down the path to destructive behaviors. (current bad-day solution behaviors are: buying things off instagram ads, numbing with familiar TV shows, processed foods). I do have a few friends who are also in this specific work, and so a good rant session about all of the ways the world doesn’t work with people who are in it can be a helpful way out of ditches.

I find that checklists and organizing and tangible work can be an antidote to the overwhelm- but it’s also easy to get focused on things that can be band-aids, because it feels better, and not get back to the work of the slow, incremental change. I probably swing back and forth more than I’d like, but maybe one day I’ll have the elusive “right balance” of action and system work that gets things done, keeps me grounded and centered, and is effective.