Since Trump’s election to office, I’ve been particularly tuned-in and spent much time thinking about, reading about, observing, and discussing the state of our country at present. After the election, my friends and I started meeting regularly over brunch with a desire to go deeper into social issues and discover what was actually happening - something we realized there was a great need yet not much space for outside of our friendship. The more education we receive from the Movement, the more our hearts ache for an answer to the suffering (whether self-induced or not) that persists in our country. This alone is beautiful for me - our desire to authentically face our country’s problems is an anomaly in our generation which most often seeks to escape, cover-up or distort. The critical lens on our culture is reserved for bitter old folks.

I recently read a poignant piece by Andrew Sullivan called “The Poison We Pick” that traced the history of the opioid epidemic in America and urged for a deeper understanding of this issue. The author of the New York Magazine article desperately claims:

To see this epidemic as simply a pharmaceutical or chemically addictive problem is to miss something: the despair that currently makes so many want to fly away. Opioids are just one of the ways Americans are trying to cope with an inhuman new world where everything is flat, where communication is virtual, and where those core elements of human happiness — faith, family, community — seem to elude so many. Until we resolve these deeper social, cultural, and psychological problems, until we discover a new meaning or reimagine our old religion or reinvent our way of life, the poppy will flourish.

This article struck me in particular because while it so keenly perceived the problem that, in my opinion, America suffers from the most, - a lack of meaning fueled by increased isolation and disengagement with reality - it ends rather hopelessly, predicting that we’re far from a solution.

I am often tempted to respond to this hopelessness with a spirit of activism. I confuse the desire for justice with an ability to create projects, organize, or even think away these problems - just like many of my peers attempt to do. I must admit this position is very alluring and, again, so deeply ingrained in the culture of my generation. I begin asking myself - what is the answer to this problem? What can I even offer? My love of humanity and my desire for change, especially in America, is something I hold dear and am not prepared to let go of. But when I look to my own experience, one clear fact emerges - what I can offer, what my country needs, is my “yes.”

A few years ago, a friend of mine said something that I’ll never forget. As we sat with some high school students of GS at a friends’ kitchen table eating pizza and sharing our lives with each other, he boldly insisted: “I wish you could understand what kind of revolution is happening here among us”. This phrase comes back to the surface each time I experience a true sharing of life with my friends in the movement - the kind of sharing that moves us to engage people at work that we disagree with, look a homeless person in the face on the street, visit strangers in prison, spend time with the elderly and lonely, and love our families in a truer way. The kind of sharing of life that moves us mysteriously and with no trace of force or activism. The kind of sharing of life that is generated by Christ out of love for humanity. The kind of sharing of life that changes the world.

My new response to the suffering of my people is an even stronger “yes” to what the Lord gives me today. It is only in saying “yes” that hope enters the world, like Fr. Giussani always reminded us in his devotion to Our Lady. The more I say “yes” to Christ, the more I see little openings for my own creativity and opportunities to love humanity - starting with my own family, co-workers and the people I encounter day by day. I give my little “yes” freely, with the hope that the One who redeems everything will use it to enter the world.

Jennifer, Woodbury, USA