Being overwhelmed is normal, and taking time to regroup is healthy

This has been a challenging week. It could be because of the symbolism around Holy Week, but it’s also because of the constant negative and nasty news that feels like a hailstorm. I’ve been doing some things to ease my mind and focus on what’s important.

For those who observe and celebrate Holy Week, we are taught about the amazing and terrifying things that happen in the last week of Jesus’s life. On the Sunday before he was crucified, he rode a donkey through the streets and then went to the Temple to turn over the tables of the moneylenders and merchants who were using the sacred space for commercial enterprise. After Jesus expelled the grifters from the Temple, Matthew writes that “the leaders were indignant.”1

Our church has been reading the book Turning Over Tables: A Lenten Call for Disrupting Power by Kathy Escobar during this season of Lent. There are readings for every day from Ash Wednesday through Easter Sunday. I really liked what Rev. Escobar wrote in this Monday’s passage:

Indignant. Some other words for it are resentful, furious, incensed, miffed, displeased, upset, boiling, bent out of shape. Even though this word was used to describe the leaders in the moment, I think it aptly describes what Jesus was feeling too. And what so many of us are experiencing these days, indignant at the unholy marriage of faith to an ultraconservative political agenda. Resentful, furious, displeased, bent out of shape.

I subscribe to a number of Substack newsletters. This week has been a flood of stories about Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s rendition to El Salvador and the Fourth Circuit Court’s opinion scolding the administration for blatantly refusing to comply with Judge Paula Xinis’s ruling to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, as per the Supreme Court’s decision in the matter. There were so many newsletters covering the topic that I didn’t read most of them. It was just too much.

I posted this morning on Bluesky that “As much as I want Kilmar Abrego Garcia to come home, we have to remember that there are countless others who were rendered to CECOT without due process. We need to work to bring them ALL home.” My new friend Eric Woldry replied, brilliantly:

The way Abrego Garcia is being fronted as an innocent deporter reminds me of how Ryan White became the face of AIDS, with lots of talk about “innocent victims of AIDS”, while completely ignoring care for the multitudes living with HIV who didn’t meet the mainstream conception of “innocent”.

Ryan White deserved care. So did *everyone else* with HIV, regardless of the route whereby they contracted the virus, regardless of whether they were white male children, regardless of whether the media loved them. Their rights should never have been contingent upon perceived worthiness.

In the same vein, Abrego Garcia deserves due process *in exactly the same way* that everyone sent to a Salvadoran gulag deserves due process, regardless of whatever they have (or are alleged to have) done.

Bring them ALL home. If they’re charged with a crime, they deserve their day in court.

It was a painful but necessary reminder of the demonization of gay men and IV drug users during the early days of the AIDS epidemic. Research was delayed because those who suffered from the disease were considered expendable. “God punishes sinners,” the ultra-right-wing folks said. If we got HIV, we obviously deserved it.

Forty years ago, resisters began to fight back against the conservative rhetoric. ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) rose up and marched in the streets reminding people to “Act Up! Fight Back! Fight AIDS!!” Just as those brave souls did then, we must fight back against the right again, but now they are demonizing not just people, but also institutions. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Park System, the Internal Revenue Service, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and many other agencies are under attack.

The HANDS OFF movement is taking off. The protest rally on Saturday was uplifting and powerful. Another rally is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon in Evansville from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m., and Henderson, Kentucky, is planning one from noon to 3:00 p.m. A new Facebook group was created for Henderson “blue dots” to connect. I encourage you to sign up at Indivisible.org and 50501 to get their newsletters. Find your local group. Make signs. Get involved.

I took a bit of a breather this week to focus on some other things that would distract me from the news. I didn’t spend quite so much time on Bluesky, although the new friends I’m making there lift me up in amazing ways. I did meet on Wednesday with Helpful Hippie, the amazing woman who has been organizing the Evansville protests. I am totally inspired by her, her energy, and her passion to make a difference. She has ideas for a lot of other ways to find community with other resisters that aren’t just about shouting slogans and waving signs. Stay tuned – more good is going to be happening with the resistance. I’m sure of it.

I will close by sharing this picture of a rock stack that is in our backyard. I like the juxtaposition of the stack in front of our Progress Pride flag that we fly year-round.

Stay peaceful, friends, and stay strong.

1 Matthew 21:15, New Living Translation