I looked at the calendar last Friday in weary disbelief. Trump has only been back in office for less than a week? It felt like much longer. All the weariness and the anger has started to pile up again after a four-year respite. Why can’t all the Republicans see the rank hypocrisy? Why don’t they care? Why did all the principles they taught me for 30 years suddenly go out the window?

There are some differences this time, though, and some lessons I’ve learned along the way that might help this time around.

Community Matters

Eight years ago the majority of my local faith community were Trump supporters, and I was the lonely, frustrated, confused voice in their evangelical wilderness. Near the end of Trump’s first term we left that community. We survived on online faith communities for a couple years before finally finding a supportive local church again. At the Episcopal church we don’t unite around politics, which means we still have Trump supporters in our midst, but we don’t hold onto MAGA principles as cultural norms. Local, weekly solidarity and encouragement makes a huge difference.

Managing my Attention Budget

Social media can be great; it can also be awful. We were not designed to know all the things all the time. In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya: “It’s too much. Let me sum up.” I can and need to budget my attention. Not burying my head in the sand about the chaos and evil that is being perpetrated on us by this administration, but also not listening to every anguished other person on social media reacting to it. I need to make sure that my attention is also drawn to the good, the beautiful, and the lovely. (Maybe that Philippians 4:8 message from my evangelical phase has some application here not in avoiding sin but in managing mentally in a difficult time!)

The Weight of the World

It’s a weird position to be in: as a cisgender, middle-aged white man I should be one of the folks least concerned about the new administration’s policies. If anything, they’re designed to promote and benefit people like me. And yet I’m horrified by so many of the actions they’re taking. I also have dear friends and family members who are not in the regime-preferred demographic and who will be directly affected. And I also want the best for them. And so these things weigh heavily. These issues matter, they must matter. We need to work against tyranny and to respect the dignity of every person. We need to love our neighbor as ourself, and welcome the immigrant and the stranger.

I have no idea how the next four years or the next four decades will play out; whether the fury of executive actions this week will flame out as they run up against organizational inertia and the national reality, or whether the second half of my life will be lived out in a country whose government looks very different than it did for the first half. (Who knew that all the “will you be ready for government persecution?” messages we got in youth group would suddenly become applicable when the Christians took power?) But I am mindful that most people throughout history have lived under governments as or more evil and corrupt than this government is shaping up to be, and those people have managed to live, thrive, even flourish. May it be so for us, in this place and time, as well.