[105] An Unwavering Presence.

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Today marks two years of Something Else. I’m still not sure if this is a column, a sermon, or a newsletter. I guess it depends on the reader. It always depends on the reader – and it is humbling that anyone reads this. Really. Thank you for reading this.
My writing is the fruit of my wrestling. It is the way I attempt to make sense of our current context, what I called in my very first offering “a season of escalating fascism.” Since then, I've come to quantify this American moment a little differently.
It feels more like this society is going crazy, like this whole imperial edifice is literally about to collapse on its foolish foundation of supremacy.
Ever since my first post on this platform, which was eight months into a full-fledged genocide, politicians from both parties have continued to greenlight the shipment of weapons to the apartheid state of Israel, even as it indiscriminately bombs hospitals, schools, refugee camps, orphanages, soccer fields, universities, churches and mosques.
The insanity continues to this day – in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran and elsewhere - even after “ceasefires” have been signed. The genocide drones on and on like one of those awkwardly long pharmaceutical drug commercials with the fine print and fast talk detailing all the gnarly side effects.
The same painfully long commercial keeps playing - over and over and over again - and few of our leaders seem to care about the gnarly side effects.
Even worse, if you publicly call out the invasion, occupation, genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid, you will be labeled an “antisemite” or a “supporter of Hamas.” If you are courageous enough to take it further, and you confront it through organized direct action, you will be targeted for intimidation - and you might get charged with “conspiracy” and “domestic terrorism.”
If you contact your elected representative in Congress and demand that they stop voting to send weapons to Israel, you’ll likely get a follow-up form email with six paragraphs of Zionist propaganda.
Almost every single billionaire, celebrity, professional athlete, politician, pastor and news anchor has participated in this propaganda machine that makes this mass-murder palatable to the public.
Meanwhile, most politicians - from both parties - tell us that the country is too broke to provide universal healthcare or affordable housing or college tuition or public transportation, while they vote to dramatically increase budgets for the police, the Pentagon and ICE.
At the time of my first offering, two years ago, the federal government was spending about $150 million a year on surveillance technology in its quest to hunt down dark-skinned immigrants. This year, it will spend more than $500 million.
Data brokers.
Analytics software.
Social media scrapers.
Facial recognition technologies.
Border towers.
Drones.
Hacking devices.
Spyware.
The federal government has created the infrastructure to surveil people (like me – and maybe you too) that it considers to be “anti-American” or “anti-capitalist” or “anti-Christian” or “anti-fascist.”
Politicians from both corporate-sponsored parties tell us that “socialism” does not work and they point to Cuba and say “See!” They do this unironically, always leaving out the inconvenient truth that u.s. sanctions have been crippling Cuba’s economy for decades.
American culture is cratering in a tsunami of corporate-algorithms, custody-battles, long-covid, prison-labor, micro-plastics, urban-renewal, identity-reductionism, artificial-intelligence, voter-suppression, victim-blaming, rage-baiting, book-banning, mass-shooting, green-washing, price-gouging, data-centers, detention-centers, factory farms and racial gerrymandering.
The effects of this neoliberal nightmare are palpable.
Rates of depression, anxiety, ADHD, addiction, codependency, narcissism, loneliness, suicide and insomnia are going through the roof.
This is completely insane – and unsustainable.
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A few months ago, journalist and professor Dr. Stacey Patton wrote that the real spiritual and political work right now is not about saving empire. It is about surviving it and understanding it and getting clear enough to imagine what might come after it.
The doctor just walked in and said that it’s time to put empire on hospice.
By empire, I am referring to the u.s. socio-political-economic extracting and exploiting system designed by wealthy white men for the benefit of wealthy white men - while distributing just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority.
By hospice, I am referring to end-of-life care that focuses on comfort and pain relief for the patient - and support for everyone else in the patient's life.
Our family was in a hospice situation exactly fifteen years ago. My father-in-law Mike was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was fifty-seven. He went to specialists and consulted experts, but soon enough, we had to accept that nothing was going to save him from this terminal illness.
It did not make any sense. Mike was the picture of perfect health. But we only got six more months with him, from diagnosis to death.
Hospice was a clarion call: we had to come to terms with our own powerlessness.
None of us caused this.
None of us could control this.
None of us could cure this.
Hospice was not about giving up. It was about leaning in while we let go.
Hospice was a time to shift our priorities and narrow our focus. It was a time to be present to my father-in-law - and to each other. It was a time to start preparing for what life was going to be like after he was gone.
We don’t know how long the American empire will be on hospice.
We do know that there will be suffering.
There’s always been suffering, particularly for poor and working people, for Black and Indigenous communities, for dark-skinned immigrants, for the Global South, for those who were forced to the frontlines to fight unjust foreign wars.
As attorney Norrel Hemphill testified yesterday at the National People's Hearing Tour in Detroit:
The system is doing exactly what it is intended to do - and it intends to kill us.
Norrel Hemphill is a Black woman born in Flint, raised in Detroit, and committed to making sure everyone has access to clean and affordable water.
Empire is far more interested in spending its money on weapons to commit genocide than on making sure everyone has access to clean and affordable water.
As the empire dies, as the cancer spreads to all the major organs, all the other parts of the body politic will suffer too.
If America's imperial greatness is terminal, if our society's symptoms are rooted in cancerous forces completely out of our control, then it changes everything.
It does not mean we do nothing. It means we must do Something Else.
I believe that an empire on hospice needs people who have the capacity to be present, who are committed to facing the truth of our reality, who are equipped to ease the pain and suffering, who have a vision for Something Else on the other side of death.
Butch Ware says that one of our big problems is that the bricks that are supposed to build the alternative to empire are cracked and malformed.
We are the bricks – and we have to heal and get free and grow our souls. So we can be free enough and wise enough and strong enough to build Something Else.
I believe that this work at the intersection of personal healing and collective liberation begins with people who commit to be(com)ing an unwavering presence to an imperial society on hospice.
People who are be(com)ing are not perfect. They are in a process.
People who are unwavering do not cave to what's trending. They remain rooted in conviction and deep love.
People who are present do not believe that busyness is a badge of honor. They stay and wait and watch and savor.
People who are be(com)ing an unwavering presence are serious, but they don't take themselves so seriously. They tap into their own agency. They slow down and stay in their lane. They are accountable to others. They are authentic in the moment. They reject trauma responses like cynicism, apathy, walking on eggshells and distancing to punish. They pay attention to the pain behind all the reactivity. They stop complying with the silly distractions of the corporate-sponsored culture war. They divest from everything profiting off of occupation, death and planetary destruction. They disrupt denialism. They commit to credible sources. They take cues from the cracks and corners of empire, from those who have intimately known suffering for generations. They believe the victims – the real victims. They teach children how to break rank with supremacy stories.  They get free from addiction. They put up a boundary to abusers. They pray. They meditate. They metabolize their grief and trauma. They make amends. They get to know their neighbors. For real.
People who are be(com)ing an unwavering presence are curious, compassionate, mutual, playful, aware, intimate, tender, transparent, open-hearted, emotionally available, humble and honest.
I do not believe that we are capable of be(com)ing an unwavering presence unless we turn our will and our lives over to Something Else.
When we surrender to a Power greater than empire, we can be restored to sanity.
Over the past two years, I’ve written about people who have been an unwavering presence. People like Bernadette Atuahene, Kiese Laymon, Howard Zinn, Fannie Lou Hamer, Audre Lorde, General Baker, June Jordan, John Mars, Harriet Jacobs, James Baldwin, Brihana Joy Gray, Jethro Heiko, Rashida Tlaib, Omid Shefkin, Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestinian Youth Movement, the Combahee River Collective, Wendell Berry, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, WEB Dubois, Rosa Parks, Malcolm and Martin, Marian Wright Edelman, Monica Lewis-Patrick, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Rabbi Abby Stein, Rabbi Jake Ehrlich, James Cone, Noura Erakat, Susan Abulhawa, Steven Thrasher, Abbas Alawieh, Marian Kramer, Robert and Jeannie Graetz, Grace and Jimmy Boggs, Omar El-Akkad, Aaron Bushnell, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Anne Wilson Schaef, Saul Williams, Walid Daqqa, Farah El-Sharif, Leqaa Kordia, Mahmoud Khalil, Munther Isaac, Franchesca Albanese, Anas Al-Sharif, Refaat Alareer, Lorraine Hansberry, Amilcar Cabral, Kwame Ture, Mosab Abu Toha, Mariam Barghouti, Berta Caceres, Butch Ware, Martin Niemoller, Nick Peterson, Norrel Hemphill, Pauli Murray, Maureen Taylor, William Stringfellow, Howard Thurman.
This week, I am renewing my pledge to write every week, for another year – Inshallah – as I track these other people, on the periphery and in history, who are resisting denial and amplifying hope in Something Else.