Still in Disbelief

 I have been in a daze, somewhat, in sheer and utter disbelief since November 5.

So much so, that I have not really been able to write.

Was it grief? Anger? Shock?

All of that, all of the emotions one feels when the seemingly impossible becomes possible - again.

What made it worse for me in 2024 than in 2016, is that people knew, absolutely knew what kind of person this air-breather is. What kind of people he surrounded himself with - and they voted for him anyway.

Tell me you are racist without saying it.

Tell me you are willfully ignorant without saying it.

Tell me you are sexist without saying it.

Tell me you are a deplorable human being without saying it.

Then as if matters couldn't be worse - the continuous gaslighting by this person and the people he has surrounded himself with - has been enough to send even the most stable person running for places of mental safety. It has been absolutely nuts the way the media and other "powers that be" have capitulated to this nightmare.

I am a Chaplain, training in how to handle the emotions, deeply understanding that the reaction in the body when one feels one is unsafe is what a lot of us are experiencing - fight, flight, or freeze.

Yet in all that I know, in all that history has taught me, I have been a bit perplexed in how people willfully succumbed to the whims of techbroswannabetitanmillionairiesandbillionaires that were supposed to lower the prices of eggs. Has the collective among us become that deeply uninformed and ignorant that we no longer ask questions?

Where is Walter Cronkite and the local newspapers with courageous journalists pushing back against misinformation and falsehoods? Since when did the immorality of sexual assault and rape and money laundering and outright lies replace the common decency and the so-called Christian values they promised the nation they support?

Or was it all like the man behind the green curtain? Are we living in Oz? What are t hey trying to distract from? 

I am a woman of faith, have been for all of my adult life. 

I've read the Bible in many forms and even went to graduate school and post-graduate school to study it. Now, I am not one of the PhD, ThD or DMins that exegete one line of text into three hour long sessions at the Society of Biblical Literature Conference and I haven't published a book, yet...but...being the daughter of a theologian...I am pretty sure that the entire gist of this library (more than just the 66 books that the men decided was for the Canon) was about demonstrated acts of G_d's love for humankind in spite of humankind.  Even the brown skinned Palestinian Jew they claim to follow, was no stranger to asking the hard questions and demanding that people think. He was a teacher, at heart, and wanted to teach us what love lived out loud looks like. 

It looks like education and healthcare and housing and care for the widows and orphans and the strangers among us. 

It does not look like taking over a nation to line one's own pockets or attacking education or throwing out books or legislating out the rights of half the population because they have body parts none of the men understand.

It does not look like trying to take over other countries and renaming countries because one has a fragile ego because a dude twice kissed by the sun dared to call out his mess. Or a woman with more experience than anyone who has ever sought to lead with integrity, dared to say he was unwell. Or simply because she was a brown skinned woman? I don't get it.

And yet, I do.

The mediocrity of America is on full display and while I am in disbelief that people fell for it, a part of me already knew.  

It was why I didn't watch the results.

It was why I waited until now to even say or write anything.

I knew.

In a way we all knew, because the sickness that is ytbodysupremacy in America never died. History keeps repeating until humankind decides that each of us, as the Bible teaches, all of us are created in the image of the Great Creator and none of us get out of this alive or with all our toys. All of us have are a spirit, have a soul and live in decaying bodies. Trust me, I've seen a lot of them, and all of them in the end want to know that they are loved. They don't care the body or color of the chaplain that comes in their room to offer them care and comfort.

Shouldn't it be that way in our lifetime?

Shouldn't it be that I care enough for you while you are walking and breathing?

Shouldn't it be that what we preach about isn't just rhetorical? 

I don't know what the days, months, and years ahead will hold. 

What I do know is that I will walk in love.

Even in my disbelief of what happened.

I still believe in the possible.

The writer sitting in her office sipping a latte holding on to the warmth of love looking out at a cold day in Connecticut.

Follow me on bsky.social - @antonatonitaye.bsky.social

Laying off Facebook, left Twitter a while ago. Still on Instagram for some work, but mostly here.

Currently reading - Legacy by Uché Blackstock and White Poverty by Rev. Dr. William Barber III