Shortly after the COVID lockdowns started in March 2020, we bought a smallish upright freezer to put in our garage. It felt a bit like the end of the world had arrived — or, if not the end of the world, perhaps a period of privation. My grandparents had long kept a bigger version of the freezer in their garage and I never understood why as a kid: Couldn’t they just go to the A&P down the street when they needed more food?
It was only later that I realized they had been born into the Great Depression and that saving for a rainy day — and that meant saving a little extra food for the long haul, if need be.
My grandparents practiced resilience by being prepared for the low moments.
I thought a lot about resilience in 2020. Not just because of the pandemic, but also because of the George Floyd summer and Donald Trump fall. It felt like society was coming apart, and that was genuinely a new feeling for me. I realized that I had been born in an exceptional time and place: The 1970s in the United States. That wasn’t exactly a perfect time, but my parents had both attended college and I attended college and if there wasn’t always as much money to go around as we would’ve preferred, I still had the sense well into adulthood that there was a safety net waiting for me if everything really did fall completely apart.
It came close at one point. We survived, with a lot of help. That was a function of privilege, I realize now, even if I didn’t feel very privileged.
My grandparents, and their parents, didn’t quite have that safety net. Still: They survived that Great Depression and two world wars and everything else that the 20th century threw at them. How did they do it? I’m not sure, and they’re no longer around to ask. But I imagine they kept chugging along because … what else were they going to do? Give up? Sit on the side of the road and die?
And when something like abundance came to them, they bought an upright freezer for their garage.
I’ve been thinking about resilience again lately. That’s because I fully expect 2024 to be a disaster, one way or the other. And it occurs to me that it’s vital not to surrender to the despair I — we — might be tempted to feel as the year gets more absurd and dangerous.
We need to keep chugging along.
I’ve been thinking about all of this, too, because I’m reading Tim Alberta’s “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory,”1 which investigates and interrogates the rise of Trumpist nationalism in the American evangelical church. I’ll have more to say about it later, but one of Alberta’s arguments is that Christians — who ostensibly serve a higher power, on an eternal timeline — don’t have to give into fear and hate as the church and church membership go into steep decline. They should be going about their lives and business lovingly and joyfully. 2
If you’ve been reading me any amount of time, you probably know I’m not a practicing Christian anymore — but that the Christian values I grew up with strongly inform my own outlook. And it strikes me that despite my lapsed state, Alberta’s advice still makes good sense.
What else is there to do? Give up? Sit on the side of the road and wait to die?
I don’t want to be a Pollyanna here. Things will get bad this year, I really do believe.
And at some point, it might get so bad that despair is the only sensible option. Maybe there will be no safety net for our society. It has happened before.
But we’re not there yet.
So this is how I plan to practice hope in 2024: By keeping on keeping on. By preparing as best I can for difficulties. By refusing to give in.
During the scariest days of the COVID lockdown year, I consoled myself that humanity had survived all kinds of shit, had done terrible things to itself, and that for most people throughout history life was nasty, brutish and short … and yet we’re still here.
That’s true until it’s not. Until then, we keep on chugging along.
What I’m watching
The Twelve Chairs: I read Mel Brooks' biography a few years back, and it was there that I first heard of this film. Given his description of it, I thought perhaps it was his big stab at an arty historical film ... but this is indubitably a Mel Brooks flick. The gags are big and broad, and so is much of the acting. (Did Dom DeLuise ever give a low-key performance?) But this isn't just slapstick and hammy acting — there really are moments of art here, including some of the most beautiful images ever shot for a Brooks film. Ron Moody's performance as Vorobyaninov has some real pathos, and young Frank Langella is roguishly sexy. (Of course.) Turn down the volume about 10 percent and maybe there's a great film here. As it stands: An interesting part of Brooks' filmography for its very singularity.
Photo by Ann H
I’m about halfway through. There will be a longer review in a future newsletter, I think.
This might be the most unapologetically Christian book written for a general audience in some time.
"Keep on keeping on" is true wisdom. (So is "use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without," but that's different issue.) And I hope you make "what I'm watching" a weekly feature; I'd never heard of "The Twelve Chairs" either.
Looking forward to your review of the book. Thanks for the post!