The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz

Photo by Eye for Ebony on Unsplash As I write this, it’s Juneteenth, and all over America, from neighborhood social media sites all the way to Congress, profoundly bothered white people are engaged in wild histrionics over the fact that our nation acknowledges the event as a holiday. Of course, this anger is a confession of sorts. It’s also an ironic and sad reminder that in the hearts of so many who call this place home, little has changed in 161 years. That’s the entire reason we’re here.

(Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / POOL / AFP via Getty Images) History has a way of revealing the truth, eventually. Like the sun gradually coming up over the horizon and burning away the darkness concealing everything around it, the unfolding years chase away the noisy bombast of social media rhetoric, knee-jerk think pieces, and in-the-moment emotion, leaving us with the unvarnished reality of people and their lives.

At the close of the Trump Administration’s garish, bloated, masturbatory performance art on the White House lawn, UFC fighter Josh Hokit proceeded to punctuate his match by offering a monstrous verbal assault on former First Lady Michelle Obama, targeting her gender.

How did we get here? I’m not talking about the perfect storm of corruption, toxic religion, and white nationalism that has resulted in the unthinkable ascension to power of one of the most reprehensible, festering sacks of organic matter to ever leave his putrid slime trails on the planet. Greater minds can unpack the complex historical and social explanations for the inexplicable sequel given to the greatest single collective electoral error in our history.

We’re all suffering from information poisoning. The more we know about what’s really happening in this country: the depths of our fractures, the audacity of our leaders, and the failing of our systems the greater our sense of despair can become. Our noble efforts to stay informed are locking us into an emotional state of fight, flight, or freeze that isn’t helpful or sustainable; our sober situational awareness is destroying our mental health.

What is unfolding at the Kennedy Center: This joyous subtraction. This glorious removal. This is the collective jubilation of watching a vile disfigurement reversed, a terrible stain erased, a brutal injury repaired. With the smallest restoration of justice unfolding on a massive wall of white marble, we are experiencing on a microscopic scale what it feels like when a tyrant falls. And this is just a heartening foretaste of what is coming if we choose to manifest it together.

Photo by Stephen Andrews on Unsplash Not, like, I was so embarrassed I thought I’d die, dying. Not I’m dying for a cheeseburger, dying. Not even One day, I’m going to die, dying. I mean, have you ever been suddenly swallowed up by a terrifying, suffocating, this-is-it, end-of-the-line, kicking-the-bucket, throwing-off-this-mortal-sphere certainty that you were leaving this life in those very seconds? I have.

I realize this wasn’t the script you’d written in your head for Game 3, and this morning you’re probably not in the mood to hear about moral victories. Still, I need you to hear something: the game may not have gone your way, but you won last night. You won with the thunderous chorus of boos you rained down upon that cognitively-addled malignant narcissist from every inch of the Garden’s hallowed ground.

Photo by Stephanie McCabe on Unsplash This is understandable. For the last decade, we’ve been living in dog years, friends; pummeled by a century’s worth of Constitutional crises, systemic failures, war crimes, and human moral collapses. The atrocities have accumulated, the legislative losses have piled up, and perhaps, most of all, the list of people we loved and once respected who’ve abandoned compassion and reason has grown beyond what we can fathom.

Well, it’s Pride Month, and once again this year, my timeline is filled with performative, pearl-clutching, straight, professed Christians, outraged at the supposed rainbow-bedazzled queer assault on the institution of marriage. This year, they’re even trying to meme-manifest a “Nuclear Family Month,” which is about as asinine an idea as advocating for “White History Month” every February.