Now what?
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Jan. 18, 2025

[Originally published in The Willow Letters]

Here we go again. “Unprecedented” and “uncertain” times are
ahead, and these adjectives are sure to soon become cliches.

For the last two and a half months, I have felt drained, anxious,
depressed, and tuned out. I do not have the kind of white,
middle-class privilege I can fall back on. I’ve lived through
tough times through most of my adult years, and during those days,
surviving another day or a week was the best I could focus my mind
on. And nearly a quarter century has flown by. Yet, even during
those days, I kept my sanity by being creative and making my own
opportunities where none existed. In retrospect, some of that
seemed almost delusional. But given the alternatives (such as
succumbing to substance abuse or living a life of crime) I think I
did quite well.

The other day, I wrote a message for Boundless Expeditions, the
newsletter of Infinitus Ministries.

It's hard to imagine now that, a mere 90 days ago, there was a lot
of hope and optimism. Many believed that the tight polling data
notwithstanding, their preferred candidate would win and, quote,
"democracy will prevail." There was hope. Then there was what some
call "hopium." Ultimately, hopium led to disappointment and
despair.

> It appears like the world is about to fall apart in two weeks. A
lot of us are in a fight-or-flight mode. And a lot of us are
despondent. How should we then live, in the year 2025, in the face
of an insurmountably hopeless situation? Is there a healthy way to
live in spite of what is happening?

I wrote the message from Jeremiah 29:4-8:

> “The LORD of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims to
all the exiles I have carried off from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build
houses and settle down; cultivate gardens and eat what they
produce. Get married and have children; then help your sons find
wives and your daughters find husbands in order that they too may
have children. Increase in number there so that you don’t dwindle
away. Promote the welfare of the city where I have sent you into
exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because your future depends on its
welfare. The LORD of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims:
Don’t let the prophets and diviners in your midst mislead you.
Don’t pay attention to your dreams.” (Common English Bible.)

I encourage you to read it if you feel like it, but in this
newsletter, I’d like to share some of my plans for the coming two
years and my thoughts behind them.

First, I will commit to deepening and broadening my knowledge by
furthering my education, as well as becoming a more well-read
person again.

In 2024, I completed my studies and earned a Diploma of Ministry,
as well as a Commissioned Pastoral Certificate. This year, I will
go for 18 more credits to attain a Diploma of Divinity, which would
largely parallel a 3-year seminary program. While these studies
have trained and prepared me for ministry, I am also interested in
engaging in more academic work.

Second, I commit to more artistic creativity. Art was one of the
things that kept me going for many years. In the 2010s, I was an
artist who exhibited my work in several galleries and art
festivals. Unfortunately, since I had a severe burnout in 2019, I
have not been making art, and my skills have deteriorated. I plan
on re-establishing some creative habits, such as carrying a
sketchbook everywhere. In addition, I was a more prolific writer in
the past and it is my hope to reignite that part of me, as well.

Third, I am changing the way I engage in activism. In my younger
days, I was very committed and active in that space. From the
immigrant rights movement to human rights for the houseless folks
to the Occupy Movement, I was everywhere. Lately, I have come to a
conclusion that (1) there are always those people who are better
trained, resourced, funded, and connected to do far more effective
jobs than I can even dream of doing, and it is better for me to
support those efforts, and (2) as one of the Occupy Wall Street
founders Micah White wrote several years ago, protests are no
longer an effective tool of social change, and perhaps even
counterproductive in some ways. In the coming years, I am largely
keeping a very low profile, but that does not mean I am acquiescing
or indifferent; the challenges are huge and are perhaps arduous,
but we must work smarter on multiple fronts, instead of merely
being performative or “doing protests for the protest’s
sake.” I will be focusing, whenever and wherever appropriate and
necessary, on hyper-local issues and my immediate communities, as I
believe I can still be quite effective there—not to mention the
benefits of building organic, in-person communities and
intermediary institutions at the time when the governments may be
collapsing due to incompetence and corruption.

Fourth, I will be directing much of my creative and intellectual
energies on imaginatively demonstrating what can be possible.
“Resistance” and “protests” are reactive. While they can be
helpful at times, what we need also is something far more
proactive, imaginative, and creative. I think the far-right has
done this work during the last three to four decades, often quietly
and outside the limelight, and has been quite effective in making
their visions of society more mainstream—while those who are in
the center and the left have been caught by surprise. One of my
long-time projects is a reassessment of the modern forms of state,
government, and politics, and work of proposing a whole new,
reimagined vision of what they can be to promote the common good,
individual liberties, human rights, social inclusion, social
cohesion, and economic equity. Modeled after John Locke’s
historic treatises on government, this project seeks to critique
the last 300 years of government and revise Locke’s works for the
next 300 years. Built around this “third treatise” would be a
form of prefigurative and prophetic community of people — perhaps
even a “shadow government” for the whole world — putting the
treatise into action by building parallel powers as well as
inspiring the world to take some or all of the ideas, experiment
with them, and adopt them into their communities. It is not enough
to criticize the current forms of government and the corrupt and
dysfunctional state of politics; it is a must to redesign them and
offer a blueprint for a new way of doing things — just as the
so-called “Christian” nationalists have been doing through
their own organizations and think tanks.

And finally, I will not forgo joy in my life. As philosopher Albert
Camus famously said, “The only way to deal with an unfree world
is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act
of rebellion.”

Throughout most of my adult life, I have survived difficult days
and tough times. Often the most I could think about was how to
survive another day or week. I am a survivor. But someone said to
me that I should call myself “battle-tested” instead.

In these days when hope appears elusive, I also know that with
every action, there will be an equal and opposite reaction. Perhaps
at the other end of the tunnel, we might finally find collective
courage and political will to build a world that works for
everyone.

-- Willow.

=> https://thewillow.substack.com/p/now-what Original