REDEEMING GRACE — The Path Back Towards the Light
REDEEMING GRACE — The Path Back Towards the Light
The bravest thing we can do is unite
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As is my Christmas Eve tradition, I show up early with friends to a late-night candlelight service at a Hollywood church. We arrive early because my friend who grew up Jewish and is agnostic, likes to sit in the front row and sing beatifically. The opening song each year is sung by a trans woman who sounds like Nina Simone, and with each song my heart fills with joy. One member of the choir is a trained opera singer, and next year I’m bringing her roses.
This church has a motto that ‘God is for us and not against us’, that ‘God is love’, and that ‘all are welcome and equal’. My eyes get misty reflecting back on last night — the beautiful songs I grew up with as a singer in my Catholic school’s choir — the lyrics forever etched in my mind and heart.
As we each light each other’s candle down the pews before the service ends — with all of us singing Silent Night — I saw a flash of the lyric ‘the dawn of redeeming grace’ and thought, yes, exactly so.
We are at a dawn of redeeming grace — the bravest thing we can do in America and in democratic nations throughout the world is unite.
The path back towards the light is in uniting — all faiths welcome, all people welcome. As the female pastor said last night:
“We are ‘imperfect by hopeful. We continue to speak truth to power.”
The bravest thing my podcast partners and I did this year was platform a two-time Trump voter. That gentlemen, Rich Logis, is now one of my staunchest allies.
He is doing the brave work of uniting people.
He is speaking his truth to power. He stands before all and says, ‘I was wrong. Here’s my story… ’
I am telling everyone I know about his journey, and I will be writing more on him and his words in coming days.
We can heal as a nation, and we can defy the Fifth Column Putinists trying to destroy our fragile democracy with ongoing mind assaults.
We are imperfect by hopeful.
As Logis explained to me:
“MAGA creates chaos by forcing us to go to war over every issue. MAGA mythologies do not merely change one’s identity; it goes beyond this. These mythologies change something inside of people; the unseen parts, like our souls… Some pernicious alteration occurs, internally. But this alteration need not be permanent.
“When I left MAGA activism, I came to realize that MAGA/right-wing is skilled at mythologizing the past and nostalgia; creating current trauma, panic and desperation; and combining the past and present to invent a dystopian vision of the future. Yes, rightfully so, it’s important to point out the ‘make America great again’ mythologizing of a nation that didn’t actually exist; overlooked, however, is the longer-game.
“Every day, one will see a new traumatic mythology designed to create apocalyptic desperation and panic. One day it’s beer. Then, Ivy League universities. Today, f**kin’ Chick-fil-A. It’s all designed to keep their voters/audiences traumatized, desperate and panic. But it need not be a permanent state. I found a ray of light in the darkness. Leaving MAGA was the hardest thing I ever did, but it’s also the most liberating. I know those who leave MAGA will find an immense inner-peace.”
Logis now believes this current Republican party needs to be ‘mercy killed’ at the polls. MAGA is and always was a psychological operation against Americans. He believes a reckoning will occur in 2024 that will be a total repudiation of the GOP and its culture wars of trauma.
But like me, he knows it’s going to take hard work — enlisting every voter to step up and vote for democracy.
The bravest thing we can do is unite.
It’s the dawn of redeeming grace.
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More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
