Love is a losing game

One I wish I never played
Oh, what a mess we made
And now, the final frame

The Southern Baptist Convention is the system that loosely connects the churches. For years, it was pretty much what is sounds like—an annual get together where members from the various churches gave speeches, ate traditional convention rubber chicken, and talked about the focus of the church over the coming year. For decades, most churches looked on this convention as a huge bore, and finding someone willing to attend usually required fingering a deacon who wasn’t quick enough to come up with an excuse.

But starting in the late 1970s, a group of extreme conservatives within the church got a simple idea. They encouraged their members to volunteer for the convention, and they reached out to like-minded members of other churches to persuade them to come. As soon as they held a majority at the convention, they demonstrated what so many members in all those churches had forgotten: The convention held incredible power. Using that power, they redefined what it meant to be a member church, requiring that each church swear to follow a very strict set of teaching, including things like biblical inerrancy and conservative social positions. At all levels, from pulpits, to seminaries, to missionaries, progressives and moderates were expelled.

Almost 2,000 churches left the convention. The conservatives didn’t care. That only helped them to purify their revised organization; in the wake of those departures they grew stronger by incorporating the idea of “mega-churches” that recreated many of the institutions, like youth sports leagues, that had once been part of the community. The SBC emerged from this takeover apparently weakened, but ultimately grew to be a powerhouse in the conservative movement and a cornerstone of the modern Republican Party. Whenever you see the term “evangelicals,” you can think of it as “Southern Baptists and others,” because the SBC is now the largest organization on the “Christian Right” by far—over 47,000 churches and 14 million members.

The reason for recounting this history is that something very similar has happened with Republican organizations at the state and local level. 

We might instinctively dislike uncertainty, but in truth, we would be so bored without it. Imagine watching a movie and always knowing how it turns out, or reading the same book over and over. We want surprise, adventure, and possibility.

Uncertainty is the place where we learn — if we are certain about something, there’s nothing new to learn. It’s the place where we form intimate relationships, create art, make something new. It’s the place of discovery, play, dance, growth. It’s the pre-requisite for all of this!

Connect with the times when you’ve felt the most meaning and joy: these times were filled with delicious uncertainty!

Imagine going out into the unknown, on an adventure, and find the delight in the uncertainty.

Imagine doing something meaningful for someone, with uncertainty along for the ride, adding so much meaning to the endeavor.

Imagine the uncertainty and dance of a new relationship, the vulnerability and discovery of it.

Notice the uncertainty in your life right now: is there a way you could be grateful for it? Can you savor it, like a delicious desert? Can you delight in it, like a newly discovered aria?

Can you allow yourself to open to it, and fall in love with the uncertainty of your life?

And now that all's
Been said and done
Who said it best
Were you the one?

Let's just forget
Leave it behind
And carry on

Your name and mine inside a heart upon a wall
Still finds a way to haunt me though they're so small 

I don't know how to fix the world.
I don't know how to fix myself.
Seems like we both need some love,
Seems like we both need some help.

Maybe you could fix with might.
Maybe you could just stare it down.
Seems like some tenderness 
Could turn the whole thing around.