A Matter of Faith
It’s been a tough road, this year of our Lord 2025. Before the clock struck 12 on January 1st, the dread of the coming year had already set in. We weren’t even allowed to wish for someone good, the shit had been slinging since November and we knew what we were in for. Or did we?
I rather doubt we prepared for the level of graft, fascism and hopelessness that we have seen in the last year (and the year’s not out yet). Every day we’ve woken to news of death, uncertainty and a level of abject hatred we—at least I—have only known to exist in fiction. It’s been gnarly, and as someone currently unemployed, gnarly as hell.
What’s most trying at this moment is that there’s no way out, for those of us who voted for this autocracy and those who didn’t. It feels like we’re stuck before a screen like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, forced to watch the rapid destruction of not just our nation or the world, but ourselves. And we can do nothing, nothing at all to save ourselves. Every time we think there’s a chance, Satan rolls in and gives these people an out. (Whatever Faustian pact ‘these people’ brokered must be of far more epic proportions than Goethe or any other human could have devised.) These representatives were democratically elected, and though they have no intention to follow the tenants of democracy—or basic human decency—we’re culpable for their presence and therefore their behaviour. I for one am struggling with this; I never voted for this American government, much less did I want to be in this nation, yet I am being directly affected by these destructive policies. I saw the tea leaves, railed against the dangerous November option on the subway and anywhere people would listen, and yet come the time, the bell tolled for annihilation. With a whole bunch of people thinking they were going to get through it untouched (Queen’s to all of y’all this October, by the way. Yowzers…). Yet, what’s to be done now, we’re all in this shit together.
But I don’t want to blame game, I want to wake up. I am both an artist and a service worker, two industries that have almost been left to rubble by mean budget cuts and tariffs. Yet, I still have the same high bills to pay, and the same body and mind to carry for at least the next 30 years. I cannot come to sound answer or much less sound acceptance, dear readers, of how I’m going to survive this. Like the majority of us out there, I’m worn out, incredibly discouraged and just about out of faith. And yet our only option of survival is to wake up, shake off the blanket of despair and rise up. That’s the conclusion I came to watching Sister Act, last night.
There I was lying in bed, watching a feel-good movie, and when the nun’s starting singing, I started crying. I mean blubbering and snotting all over my sheets. I was simply overcome. It was like hearing a choir of angels, who in their joy were telling me to get up and believe. Sister Act is a good movie. It’s not just a well written, acted and produced comedy, it’s also a reminder that overcoming our differences is the only way we move forward. It is in honest unity that we move forward, not greedy division. I’ve lived a lot of places, read about a lot of evil done in the name of God; to be alive during this era of Christian nationalism (oh boy the trouble I have with this term) is faith destroying. My understanding of God, Jesus, and the Holy Mary, was that their message was one of love, service and community. If someone can look in their Bible and give me the exact scripture where they said the way to grace is by killing and the unfettered acquisition of money, I will give you everything I own.
No matter how hard, no matter how exhausting and sometimes hopeless it can seem, we have to keep going. We have to be open to finding leadership in the most unusual places (an old white man ain’t going to be it) and allowing them to lead us in joyful singing. I know, it’s hard as hell right now, but we simply have to believe.
Image: Whoopi Goldberg in 'Sister Act' 1992 (Touchstone Home Entertainment)
