Timothy Snyder's on How to Avoid or Resist Tyranny: His quotes with my thoughts #13

We all experience grief, loss, the feelings of abandonment and even betrayal. I’ve experienced some of that. Losing my mom and dad, a grandma, aunt and uncle, in the midst of birthing four children. I never wanted the telephone to ring again. The last two, children, would come a bit later. 

 And then there was the time we thought all that we owned would be lost. My husband went with a group of men, camping with the Royal Rangers. An organization much like the Boy Scouts. A young boy went off by himself, fell into the river, and drowned. A hungry lawyer and a hungry reporter brought the whole thing to trial insisting it was the church’s and Royal Ranger leader’s fault. I still remember our friends, we two couples, frighted but prayerful, eating together, playing monopoly, they cheated because I was beating—we laughed until tears ran down our faces. And the next day the end of the trial, the verdict was not guilty, and the jury came down to hug the defendants. 

And then there was the time my Church, Journey now Hope, was taken by the PC (USA) denomination because we left in protest of their immoral rulings about marriage and ordination. We lost everything, except our faith. And the next Sunday in a borrowed church communion was blessed. Except my husband had trouble going up to the cup-he was scared he would get lost—and that brings me to my final loss I will write about before I get to my main subject. 

My husband had Alzheimer’s, and the first few years were blessed. We shared so much together. We walked, and sung together, visited friends, even made a trip to the bank since my husband could no longer ride his bicycle there. At the time it was the oldest bank in Sacramento, only one. My husband knew everyone there. I took him in to say goodbye and they crowded around him saying goodbye. And then that last week … 

Hospice gives you a booklet to help you understand all the signs of death. The legs becoming blotchy, and that final breathing like a fish puffing. That last week he never opened his eyes, did not speak but once, and did not eat or drink water--he could not. And over a few weeks before he had pulled out the hair on his eyebrows and mustache. We sang to him and read scripture, I think he heard. 

 And then one morning sleeping, after he was gone, God gave me a dream, I was looking out my front window and he was walking up the steps. He had long hair and thick eyebrows, a mustache and even a beard—all of it white. And then I woke up. And this is to say in the midst of sorrow and grief God gives comfort, hope and peace. 

It has been hard to write about this next subject that Timothy Snyder writes about in his On Tyranny. It includes protests and some of them I am bothered by. That is the ones that end with the protestors being violent. I know that is not God’s will. But I know that there have been some that are centered in His righteousness. 

Snyder writes: Practice Corporal Politics. “Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.”

 Now I agree with this but there is another way also. The East German Christians protested but they also prayed in their churches. They still followed the Barman Declaration that the Confessing Churches in Nazi times held to. I cannot remember where I read it but as they prayed in their churches and the tanks drove through the streets, many of those in the tanks left them and went into the churches to also pray and that had a great deal to do with how the wall fell. 

In Romania the Reformed Churches, in protecting a pastor, were a strong part of the protest, and I have a wonderful movie titled the Singing Revolution in which in Estonia the country virtually, while protesting, sang their way out of the overlords of the Soviet Union. 

 And very recently the protesters of Hong Kong were greatly carried along by Christians and in the great crowded streets a Christian song was often sung. Hong Kong's protesters adopt Christian hymn as their call to action. This protest was brutally put down, many protesters believed they needed to go into exile, some are still in prison but God has not forgotten. And that once again brings me to the subject of grief. If we do not grieve the continuing loss of democracy and the many people who are being affected by the loss we will fall into apathy—so we must at least try to understand and grieve with those who grieve.