I miss the good old days. Things were happier then, you know? Simpler. Less death, less war, less injustice, fewer despots, fewer immigrants, fewer threats to health and happiness.
Confession—I’ve actually never been one to believe in the good old days. It seems to me that the moans of the Lamentor are pretty spot on: there’s nothing new under the sun. War, peace, war, peace, war, war, war, maybe some more war. Humans showing their capacity for incredible evil. Humans showing their capacity for incredible good. We’ve seen it all before. Same song, second (thousandth) verse.
However.
That being said, the past two years have been the darkest, most fear-filled years of my life. It’s been dark and it’s been horrible and even on good days I see no hope that it will end or wane any time soon. It’s made me wonder, for the first time in my life, if maybe they really were the good old days . . .
Nope, nope. They weren’t the good old days. They were the ignorant old days. And Facebook, with the help of 830 of my personal friends, has helped to make sure I can’t get away with ignorance anymore.
Oh, Facebook, bearer of tidings of good and evil, how I love/hate thee.
We used to hear bad news through word of mouth. Now, thanks to Facebook, I bear the grief of hundreds of friends unfolding in real time.
Every day there’s more bad news. What previously unimaginable horror has been enacted today? What long concealed injustice is being revealed? Every day we bear witness to the purposeful destruction and cruel harm of the world and the people God so loves. These are things I knew we humans were capable of, but I didn’t think we would ever actually DO. And to add horror to horror, Facebook has taught me that people I know (and possibly love) in real life—these people support, applaud, and vote for this darkness and fear and pain. Friends, neighbors, blood relatives.
The ignorant days are over and gone, and hope is hard to find.
If Advent is a time of darkness and fear . . . welp, we’ve definitely arrived. If Advent is also about the hope of the coming light, then we are right to cry out in the wilderness. Where is our Gandhi? Where is our Martin Luther King, Jr.? Where is our messiah?
Part of Facebook’s addictive gamble is that I may open it up to find that Paradise has burned (oh, the symbolism), or I may find . . . cat videos. Yes, I, too, have been lured by the joy that is watching short clips of animals doing adorable things. (If hope is hard to find, joy is generally all over the place.)
The first cute animal video I remember ever watching was of an adorable little fluffy animal. It was so cute! And fluffy! And I laughed! Two days later, I read on Facebook that the video was an atrocity—what looked like a darling pet being tickled was, for the small loris, an abuse “so horrific it cannot be imagined.”
Facebook does this to me all the time, taking a good story and then showing me the ugly underbelly. Taking hope and injecting a hefty dose of despair.
Remember the heartwarming story of the little boy who started a lemonade stand to help raise money for his baby brother’s medical bills? There is hope for humanity, I felt, if a small child can do such a beautiful thing and elicit such a generous outpouring of support. Then I read an article about how we create, support, and sustain the systems that made his little lemonade stand necessary.
Or when a black friend gives birth, and we rejoice and gather to worship and adore the newborn baby. Facebook has taught me that my black friends are three to four times more likely to die in childbirth than my (white) self. Their babies are twice as likely to die.
Even the hopeful stories are dark and menacing.
Hope is not easy to find. And when you’re supposed to write an Advent post about where you see “hints of hope’s arrival or inbreaking”—well, I didn’t have a pretty ending to work towards. More of a ‘yeah, it’s dark.’
Scrawled in my notebook is this phrase: Facebook pollutes hope. But after two weeks of trying to wrestle this post into coherence, I’d like to rescind and revise.
Ignorance makes hope easier.
And we like easy. But if we are to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly as we are called to do, we must be brave.
Brave enough to risk the darkness that comes with the knowledge of good and evil.
Brave enough to push through the paralyzation of being overwhelmed by the world’s grief.
Brave enough to be the light when we can’t see the light.
Brave enough to choose to hope when hope cannot be found and hope cannot be felt.
During Advent, we remember that God has come once, and God will come again. But as the years pass and Advent comes again and again and again, it becomes clear that God also comes again and again and again. Darkness gives way to light, again and again and again. That’s hope, right there.
So Facebook, my apologies. I don’t imagine that our relationship will ever be easy, that I will ever relish having my ignorance stripped away, that I will ever be able to open you without cringing. But I’m here, and I’m choosing hope. Show me the work that is to be done.
Do not be daunted
by the enormity
of the world’s grief.
Do justly, now.
Love mercy, now.
Walk humbly, now.
You are not obligated
to complete the work,
but neither are you free
to abandon it.
—the Talmud