A Time of Reflection

Here we are at the almost-Christmas time. We’ve only the next 48 hours or so to manically run around and gather the last groceries, the last presents or stocking stuffers, and the last bits and bobs that will compose our Christmas idyll. We’ve made it almost 359 days of the 365 allotted for this circuit around the sun. Pretty fantastic if you ask me, all things considered.

There are those occasions that have arisen during the year that have caused no end of worry: war in the Middle East, continued war in Ukraine, the various aspersions cast in the US Congressional races and sessions, and humanity has persisted in some way, shape, or form.

We’ve seen the ugly side of who we are. We've seen our anger and resentment against our neighbours spill out into the streets of Dublin, and we’ve seen an exponential rise in nativism and fascism, misinformation, and antisemitism. We’ve truly entered the age of subjective truths based around artificially constructed “bots” that pretend to synthesize reality according to the annals of human history. All said and done, it’s turned into a slippery slope of depravity.

Now that we’ve sufficiently set the basement of our human experience (and thrown a shovel down there for good measure), I’d be remiss if I didn’t reflect on what we’ve built together. We’ve seen the rise of alternative communities designed to curate and highlight truth and light. We’ve seen staunch defenders of liberties and the marginalised step forward and litigate strongly against the darkness of the aforementioned fascist thugs. We’ve seen the quiet good become louder, the agitation for what could be become ever stronger, and the foment for change turn from seething fury into the beginnings of a social tidal wave.

We’ve done this together, you and I. We’ve done it through our words, carefully crafted or not. We’ve done it through conversations, connections, and the network effects of people united in purpose and polity. We’ve agonised for change (in a way that Mouffe would be proud and Arendt would respect) and understood that sometimes conflict is the way forward. We’ve stood our ground.

More work has yet to be done. We still have the aegis of theocracy hanging over our heads, brought about by the evil in our hearts. We have Abbott and Paxton stripping away the foundations of humanity, of gender, of individual rights in Texas. We have Mike Johnson and his ilk treading the halls of our Congress in America propounding falsehoods about what it means to be human in America. We have the marginalised being charged with felonies because their bodies don’t conform to the “pale, male, and stale” falsehoods of a patristic, theocratic ideology wrought from the poisoned pulpits of Western Christendom. We have a battle ahead that indicates a war for the very soul of who we claim to be and stand for.

And it’s not just America. It’s global. The rising tide of subversion through theocracy, autocracy, through totalitarianism, strikes us all. The foment in Eastern Europe as the Orbans of this world seek to repress freedoms, the rise of ultra-right nationalism in Poland and Germany, the fascism emerging elsewhere…indices, all, of a rising discontent with status quo and Western approbation.

We’ve lived through heady times and there are more to come. It’s perhaps not the Advent message or reflection that you expected but, as we look ahead to what is yet to be, how could we not take a moment to look out to the horizon, squint our eyes against the blazing rays of the sunsets, and pray that our resolve carries us further onward, further upward?

I challenge you to take these next 48 hours, these next golden days that close out 2023, and reflect on your year. Reflect on the sunshine, the rain, the clouds, the moments that made you and broke you, the connections and the possibilities it brought. Turn these reflections to the rising sun of 2024 and use them to shine the light onto the path forward. Step by step, brick by brick, sunrise by sunrise, and the setting of the same, we will continue to build stronger connections and stronger communities.

I’m all in. Are you?

May it ever be so.