In Between Times

Hi Resistance Readers!

It’s been a VERY long week, with lots of craziness going on in the news and too many headlines to keep track of. Plus the holidays are coming up or already here for a lot of people (depending on what you celebrate). I’ve been running around trying to finish shopping for presents, baking, wrapping gifts, making tamales… There’s too much to do and not enough time for any of it, though I love the holiday season and I’m enjoying the chaos despite everything. I hope you’re finding time to enjoy yourself amid the chaos, too.

I’ve been trying to gauge how I’m feeling at the end of this very long, very chaotic year. How would I sum up everything that’s happened this year? And what do I think we have to look forward to in the new year ahead? Good things? Bad? A mix of both? I believe in intuition, and I believe that we can sometimes sense things coming around the corner, good and bad. But trying to tap into my own intuition to make any kind of guess or prediction about the future is hard right now. There’s too much going on and no real sense of where it will lead. And even when intuition, or gut feeling if you prefer to call it that, is accurate, it can only tell you so much.

If I had to put words to the feelings I can name, I would say that it feels like we’re caught in a space between times. It feels like we’re in this weird in-between zone, between the darkness of the past years and the more hopeful, somewhat lighter future. The red hat regime is trying to pull us back into some past world where, they claim, things were better. Their own slogan–Make American Great Again–implies that there was a time in the past when America was greater than it is now, and that if we can go back to that imaginary golden age, we’ll prosper again. If we think about it, America may have once been greater for a select group of people who looked, lived, and thought a certain way, but most other people were left out in the cold. Going back to that time would mean going back to a time when only certain people got to enjoy a great America. And even if we wanted to do that, even if it would somehow make America better to make it worse for most people, we can’t turn back the clock. Too much has changed, for better and for worse, to set our clocks and our laws and our lives back to some undefined period of time when the world was “better” for some of us.

Fortunately, there is no going back to that imaginary time. We can only go forward. But the times we’re living in now are too dark to say that we’ve “arrived” anywhere good. There’s a lot going wrong right now. So we’re stuck in between the darkness of the past, the dark vision that the regime wants to drag us into, and the uncertain but, maybe, less dark future. We have no idea what that future will hold, or how long it will take us to get there. All we can do is walk forward to meet it, and have hope.

So what do we do with ourselves now, while we’re stuck in this weird in-between? I’ve been asking that question a lot lately. And the answer I continue to get, when I pray and when I search my soul for what I need and what I feel called to do, is a sense of being told “Be patient.” There’s a sense that there is something coming around the corner, and big things to come in the days or weeks or months ahead. But my job is not to run headlong out to meet it or try to parse out what it is. My job is to be patient, and to let whatever will happen come at its own pace.

There’s still work to be done. I’ll keep reading banned books and yapping about them on the internet. I’ll keep sharing resources and news with people who love books and libraries and want to fight censorship with me. I’ll keep my ear to the ground to fight book bans in my local community. I’ll keep learning and growing as a person. I’ll keep meeting with my book club and growing the friendships I’ve made there. I’ll lean into my relationships with people who love me and build me up as a person. I won’t give my time and energy to things that tear me down. And I will absolutely vote in the midterm elections and find other ways to push back against the regime. Being patient doesn’t mean that I’ll tap out of the fight and sit back and wait for things to happen. It means focusing on what matters and making that my priority, without worrying more than I need to about the future and what it may or may not hold. And it means letting things play out as they will, without spending my precious time and energy worrying or trying to control things that aren’t in my control.

So if there’s a message I could give to you, Resistance Readers, it would be to focus on the things that matter most to you in the year ahead. Don’t let yourself get distracted worrying about things that may or may not happen that you have no control over. Do what builds you up. Find joy in the people and pursuits that matter to you. Read books. Lots of books. Take good care of yourself and the people you love. Practice the hobbies, routines, and rituals in your life that help you stay sane and find some joy and peace. Make cool things, whether that’s food or crafts or something else that feeds your soul. Speak up about the issues that matter most to you. Be part of your local community and get involved in advocating for what your community needs. Vote. And when you can, practice being patient. Focus on what you can do, and let the rest come in its own time.

This will be my last weekly Substack post until the new year starts. I’m taking a break from writing and posting here to spend time with family and friends. I will send out the new issue of the Resistance Roundup on Monday; that issue will be the last one for 2025. I wish every one of you a wonderful holiday season, whatever and however you celebrate. Thank you for taking the time to read my posts and sharing your kind comments with me as I ramble on the internet. It makes me so happy to know that others are listening and are encouraged by the things I’m writing here.

See you next year.