Given the results of the election, we now know this: America wants Trump.  Not just the convoluted Electoral College, but the majority of voting Americans have decided this.   

When I sit down with folks undergoing a faith crisis – often one that has been unfolding for years – a word that frequently arises is “disillusioned.”  It’s disillusioning when the foundation that once gave one stability no longer holds.  It’s disillusioning when the maps of meaning-making no longer work. 

Despite the pain it represents, I’ve come to appreciate this word: Disillusioned.

Dis-illusioned.

To be disillusioned is to have one’s illusions removed.  It can be a slow process, or it can be sudden, leaving one reeling.  Disillusionment pushes one past denial, toward the more generative gifts of grief.  Letting go of illusions ultimately frees one to see more clearly, to live out of a deeper, hard-earned truth the illusion was hiding.

Our nation has decided it wants a leader who pledges to deport millions of immigrants and refugees.  We have decided we want the bravado that inflates the ego of many and deflates the humanity of others.  We have decided to not just flirt with authoritarianism, but to start going steady.

Nations are complex organisms, never just one thing.  For now, there can be no illusion that the part of our country that wants all this is not some short-lived exception to the rules we thought we understood.  This is a time of disillusionment, which comes with a painful gift.  When illusions are removed, we see what was previously hidden, we know more deeply what we most value, and, amidst the community of the disillusioned, we are empowered to act accordingly. 

Joel