Hope for the Unsexy Work of Incremental Change

the world is not a dumpster fire/Advent #1

Dec 06, 2023

There needs to be a word for the feeling of being simultaneously overwhelmed and discouraged. Not dis-whelmed, or over-couraged, which both sound weirdly positive. Maybe undercouraged? It’s the feeling that you have an enormous task in front of you but also that it might not make any difference? Like trying to dig a tunnel with a spoon? Probably there is a German word for this.

This feeling often comes up for me in early December. It’s the thousand extra tasks that need to be done for Christmas. It’s the realization that the year is almost over and what do I have to show for it?

It’s also my birthday, which brings on Torschlusspanik of its own. Specifically this year it’s an upcoming workshop I’m hosting to help parents understand the impacts of school choice on racial segregation. Registration has been slow and volunteers haven’t materialized in the numbers I’d hoped. In moments like these, part of me thinks, “I’m doing all this work, and for what?” Very undercouraging.

When I was growing up with a children’s minister mom, there was a lot of talk about numbers in the church. Behind closed doors, high attendance numbers were often given as a sign of a program’s success; explosive growth was the holy grail. It feels icky to try to quantify church work in this way, but perhaps inevitable given our culture’s obsession with metrics and SMART goals. I see this in non-profits, too, the way they’re driven to report numbers served or total volunteer hours. Numbers can never tell us the quality of these interactions or the depth of these relationships.

Because while capitalism glorifies profits and return on investment, those of us engaged in the messy, slow work of people can’t point to year-end financials. I heard one pastor describe the work of parents, teachers, pastors, activists, etc. as “seed planters.” (Artists and writers can probably be thrown into that category as well.) It can years or decades for the work to bear fruit, and who knows if all our carefully laid plans will come to fruition? It’s a supreme act of hope to get up every day and keep doing the work.

I take some comfort, as we begin this Advent season, in thinking about Jesus, whose vision of morality is still ahead of its time. Two thousand years after his death, it seems humanity still isn’t ready to turn the other cheek or to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. We still live in a world ruled by violence and greed. Does the work of people like Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. amount to nothing?

Of course not. For every light unjustly snuffed out before its time, millions of others are kindled. We may be only one strand in a tapestry but just because we can’t see our own significance doesn’t mean we don’t have any.

That’s why I get irritated when people talk about the world as being a “dumpster fire,” spreading a lazy attitude of hopelessness. “Climate change/Trump/the opioid crisis/racism exist, so there’s no point to making plans or trying!” seems to be the motto for many people. Imagine if our ancestors had said that when Hitler came to power.

And yes, it’s okay to feel undercouraged, it’s probably even smart. But we can’t afford to get stuck there. We must answer the call to help repair the world, even in small, incremental ways. We must go to meetings and pin up fliers and make phone calls. We must take time to answer the questions of small children. We must take steps on a journey of which we cannot see the ending. Yes, the world is overwhelming sometimes. Here’s a spoon. Start digging.

Are you a “seed planter”? How do you keep up hope as you wait for your work to come to fruition? Share your hope in the comments.

Heretic Hereafter

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