We are still inside of the first month of this administration and I am honestly exhausted. I am exhausted by the daily attacks on democracy and common sense. I am exhausted by how many supposed leaders and institutions that are bending the knee in anticipatory obedience – from legacy media normalizing his ridiculous, anti-democratic, nonsensical statements and policies, to the NFL removing “End Racism” from the endzone for the Super Bowl.

And perhaps even more exhausting to me are the evangelicals – people who claim the name Christian, but who seem completely unfamiliar with the biblical Jesus. I see so many evangelicals who seem to not just approve of trump’s policies, but who are wildly enthusiastic about thousands of federal government civil servants losing their jobs even though they do amazing things like work with refugees, stop diseases, support democratic movements, etc. How can you delight in someone losing their job who is trying to help people? And then taking delight at immigrants who are being deported and separated from their families? Delighting oneself at the break up of immigrant families and servants losing their jobs is simply demonic.

So, each day has been a struggle. But I have noticed that I have started doing some things to care for myself even in the midst of the intentional chaos and cruelty of this administration. Though I am very much of a low-church tradition, I have started in my mind calling these practices, “rituals.” Rituals, according to anthropologist Victor Turner in his book, “The Ritual Process,” are those practices or words that carry messages about a society’s values. Rituals pass on cultural identity.

Rituals strengthen and hold up. They remind us who we are and what we are called to. I consider the time when I drive to work in the morning as I spend that time in silence, thinking about the day, stating what I need to do and what I need to get things done. Then, after I arrive, I spend a little bit of time in our chapel listening to God. I also consider one of my rituals driving home as I listen to one of the podcasts I follow (I am listening to one now called the RFK Tapes). It’s more than an escape from the stupidity of the news. It allows me to focus on history; to learn and reflect on how things that happened in our past can impact our present. Then, when I get home, before I go inside, I pause and give thanks for making it through another day.

But rituals are even more powerful when they are shared by a common group of people; a community. Turner calls rituals that strengthen personal ties and adherence to a local community as communitas. Rituals again strengthen the societal structure just as they strengthen the individual. Rituals secure the roles and statuses of those within the community and rituals can also give freedom to the rise of innovation. The former is seen at the Festival Center whenever the nonprofit groups that call the Festival Center home meet together and share in a teach-in or hear from one another about the nature of our work; what we are struggling with and what we are celebrating. Though the over 20 organizations that fill the Festival Center work on many different issues across the DMV (DC, Maryland, Virginia), our individual missions are strengthened and encouraged through our shared geographical and political space.

And the latter form of rituals, that of giving space for creation and innovation, is often found the morning of Potter’s House Tuesday. Every Tuesday we buy coffee and pastries from Potter’s House and share them with the folks that come in to work or who have meetings in our building. They are placed at the front desk, which is where I usually sit. And I have some of the best and most interesting conversations as folks get their coffee and morning pastry! Sometimes we just catch up or share what is happening in the world, but almost weekly there are conversations about ideas that someone is having about more effectively serving people, or resisting the current administration. That is when the magic happens. We dream of what we can do to publicly witness for the hope of real justice to come.

Our community is both strengthened and challenged through rituals. We both care for ourselves through individual rituals and care for the world in which we live through rituals. Indeed, we build the world we want to live in through the rituals we keep. Sure, rituals can be used to shelter us from the pains of this world, but when we use rituals in that way we only serve to maintain an unjust status quo. The sufferings in the world only persist. But when rituals embolden us to dive more deeply into community – communion with God and solidarity with God’s creation – then we are strengthening our resistance to an autocratic empire bent on cruelty and destruction.