This is the blank space
A Pastor's son recognizes the moment we're in and what we're making of it
Nathan Ryan is one of my favorite people. We met when he was founding a group to facilitate civil conversations. He’s a local businessman and a good man, but what is most interesting to me is that from the ages of 15-21 he was a drummer in the Christian rock version of Coldplay. I asked him to think about the good that we’re making of this moment and how it might carry on into the new normal and am so excited for you to read what he came up with.
I was fourteen or fifteen and sitting at Peet’s Coffee when Ron Jones, the new student ministries pastor at the church my dad pastors in Southern California, asked me something along the lines of, “What are you struggling with right now?”
A rather benign question in my experience, asked routinely of people by pastors and, as a pastor’s kid, I had a solid, well-rehearsed answer.
“I just want to read my Bible more,” I said with an invisible smirk knowing I’d cleared that hurdle. “I want to read my Bible more” is the Evangelical equivalent of saying “I think I’m just too good at dealing with customers” in a job interview at Starbucks. Ron had just served me an Evangelical alley-oop.
Which is why when he slowly set down his coffee, looked me in the eye and responded with, “Well, my wife and I are fighting nonstop, and I don’t have time for your bullshit answers, so, please, give me something real, Nate,” I almost choked on my scone.
Growing up I heard a lot about the importance of being intentional, of having intentional habits, friendships, relationships, and especially faith. An unintentional faith is ultimately an inactive one. But one thing that was regularly left out of conversations about intentionality was that one has to be honest in order to be intentional. You can’t be intentional if you’re lying about where you’re starting from, where you really want to go, who you want to be, what you want to do, and the thing they really don’t tell you is that only you get to decide those answers for yourself.
Ron and I met when I was in junior high school. He had just come on as the student ministries pastor at my dad’s church and, like youth pastors before him, he went out of his way to meet with me, his boss’s son—gotta be on the PK’s good side. Unlike previous student ministries pastors, however, Ron clearly didn’t want my bullshit, and the fact that he actually used that word to push me shook the ground for this rather sheltered Jesus Freak.
Since then, my faith has evolved as I’ve run businesses and become involved in government and politics. I’ve watched the idea that “intentionality” matters permeate everything from political discourse to business, wellness, food and conversation. To a large degree, I’m still on board with it, but this COVID-19 quarantine has me looking at intentionality differently.
While I’ve had some great digital happy hours with friends over the last few weeks—many of whom I haven’t seen in quite some time—what I find myself missing most is spontaneity. I miss wandering into a local bar with a book and no plans to meet anybody in particular.
I can almost hear the barstool scrape the floor as I pull it back and tell the bartender I’ll have the lager, whichever one’s their favorite, and ask how their day’s going. I’ll pick my book up and stare at it but, really, I’m lost in the intriguing fragments of somebody else’s conversation, trying to piece the story together and then, before I can dig back into whatever I’m reading, a friend walks in, we hug (remember those?) and get lost in conversation about whatever. I order another beer and the conversation flows.
I miss all of this, mostly because some of the best conversations, ideas, and habits form when nobody knows what’s going to happen next—in fact, many of life’s best things are the result of a complete lack of intentionality. That’s because if somebody is confident about the outcome, somebody can be “right” about the appropriate way to act or react. The result is a kind of groupthink that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy about how a conversation or event “should” have gone.
If you’re in a spontaneous space where nobody’s confident about the outcome—where nobody has a fixed idea of how something ends—then every outcome and every action and reaction are possible. Ideas that would have otherwise been absurd under “normal” circumstances suddenly become plausible. Initiatives that would have been laughed away in other contexts are worth exploring.
We’re in that kind of spontaneous, ill-defined moment now as a society.
Many people sound sure of the outcomes. Some are well-educated medical professionals, and those are the folks worth listening to, but this is a rare moment where nobody really knows how this ends. That uncertainty is causing people to think and try things that would normally be laughed at for being too outlandish, and few people are pushing back.
Things like Universal Basic Income and direct cash assistance are being talked about by leaders of both political parties. Loans and loan forgiveness, rent abatement, halting foreclosures, foregoing debt collection, free medical care, housing for the homeless—all things that, mere weeks ago would’ve been completely out of the question politically are on the table now.
I believe we’re here because this moment requires us to drop our bullshit.
The best case scenario in this circumstance says that between 100,000 and 250,000 Americans die of coronavirus—all of them without being able to say goodbye to their loved ones. Ten million Americans have lost their jobs over the last few weeks, and many businesses will shutter. We’re stuck at home, and we have to get real with friends and family through handheld screens.
This means people are getting spontaneous intentionally. We can’t just run into one another at a bar, so we’re spontaneously calling and texting people we haven’t talked to in years just to be honest about how we’re doing; we’re putting aside political battles for now to solve problems; we’re delivering meals and hand making face masks; we’re meeting neighbors for the first time to ask if we can bring them groceries.
We’re doing all of these things, taking all of these risks, acting in true solidarity with each other because we are better and braver and bolder, more creative and more kind than some of our leaders would like us to believe.
We are deciding and acting on all this without spontaneous hugs and pints of beer with friends, without accidental forums for spontaneous conversation. We are deciding to be this way alone, at home, as we read about heroic acts and learn terrifying facts and figures about this disease that has not threatened to tear us apart—it has physically torn us apart. But our social bonds are getting stronger as a result.
This is the blank space—nobody knows how this ends. To some extent, we get to write it. These spontaneous, bold, creative acts of bravery and kindness, borne of a lonely, introspective time, are the foundation we are collectively intentionally laying for our shared future.
Let’s keep it up.
RIP
I would like to pay respect to those we lose along the way. If there is someone you would like to be remembered in future newsletters, please post links to their obituaries in the comments section or email me. Thank you.
How we’re getting through this
Reading Esquire’s “What I learned” archives.
Watching the National Orchestra of France reinvent a concert performance.
What I’m reading
Here’s how the pandemic will end.
Would you like to read the world’s most obvious subhed?
An infographic on all the vaccines and treatments for COVID-19 in development right now? Yes, please.
I love this headline and everything that is under it.
The good news is that almost half of Americans say they are willing to pay for news. The bad is, well… Good global data here about who pays for news and entertainment.
About 1 in 5 millennials are researching vacations. Bless their souls.
Need a whole book? Sam Gwynne, who recently guest-posted here, wrote the myth-busting and eminently readable Hymns of the Republic, and Kate Dawson has been getting a ton of buzz for American Sherlock, which I can’t wait to read after I’m done writing my own.
Got some reading suggestions? Post them in the comments section, and I might include them in the next newsletter. Have a book to promote? Let me know in the comments or email me.
What I’m watching
Saw 1917 and agree with Ann Hornaday.
Kudos to E.Y. and R.Y. for recommending The Peanut Butter Falcon, which I would totally invite to my birthday party. Here’s the review in the Post and the Times.
Got suggestions? Post them in the comments section, and I might include them in the next newsletter.
What I’m listening to
NNAMDÏ just dropped his album BRAT. If you’re feeling a little weird and adventurous, give this a listen. The Chicago multi-instrumentalist wrote, performed, and engineered the whole album, which sounds like neurons firing in a creative mind.
Got suggestions? Post them in the comments section, and I might include them in the next newsletter.
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