This week, I was struck by PM Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. He referenced Czech dissident Václav’s essay, “The Power of the Powerless”. In the essay, Vaclav’ asked how communist rule in the Soviet Union survived for so long. Modern scholars estimate that somewhere between 15 and 30 million people were victims of this regime. Early non-archival estimates double that death count. How did it get away with this? Here is Carney’s summary of Vaclav’s answer:

“And his answer began with a greengrocer. Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: “Workers of the world, unite!” He doesn’t believe it. No one does. But he places the sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists. Not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.

Havel called this “living within a lie.” The system’s power comes not from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true. And its fragility comes from the same source: when even one person stops performing — when the greengrocer removes his sign — the illusion begins to crack. Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.”

Carney acknowledged the strong tendency within us to “live within the lie”: To “go along to get along. To accommodate. To avoid trouble. To hope that compliance will buy safety.” But he challenged those gathered to “live the truth” instead. “Nostalgia isn’t a strategy”, he said. “Instead of living in the world as we want it to be, we actively take on the world as it is.” From this fractured present reality, something new can emerge, but only if we get honest.

I was struck by how his challenge fits both the macro level – global politics, and the micro level – our personal lives. Will we accommodate? Go along to get along? Nostalgically clinging to the past while denying the present? Or will we look reality in the face and meet it on its own terms?

This Epiphany, I am inviting us to stop, look and listen for how God is manifesting around us, in real time. Implicit within this is an invitation to get honest – to stop, look, and listen to the reality of our lives as well. Not our lives as we wish they were, or even hope they will be, but as they are. God manifests in the here and now, particularly in the realities that we wish were otherwise.

Peace be with you this Epiphany.

Anne

Rev. Anne Baxter Smith

Pastor, Southpoint Church