19  THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH

A FEW YEARS AGO MY HUSBAND AND I went to Disneyland to celebrate our ten-year anniversary. I’m not someone you’d think would love Disneyland. I pride myself on rejecting artifice, on embracing authenticity; I’m obsessed with inequality and poverty; I lie awake at night trying to solve the problems of the world. But once I am in Disneyland, I lose my mind just a little bit. There’s so much magic, such well-manicured trees, spotless buildings, and visually entrancing rides, variations on classic songs I’ve heard since I was a child piped in around every corner, a sort of nostalgic light show happening in my brain, bursting forth with warmth and pleasure. I can finally be carefree because millions of dollars have been poured into helping me forget that another world exists outside of this magic kingdom.

I spent much of my time in the section of Disneyland known Fantasyland, eating hot churros and ruminating on the cartoons I grew up watching. All the old Disney films were morality tales, in a way, designed to tell children how to act in a society that craved order. The original stories—modeled on old storytelling traditions like the Brothers Grimm—warned children to be obedient to their parents or they would die horrible deaths. I thought about this as I waited in line, surrounded by children melting down due to overstimulation. I daydreamed about which classic Christian vices correlated to which early Disney film. Mr. Toad was gluttony. Pinocchio was lust. Peter Pan was avarice or greed. Snow White’s stepmother was envy, and so on and so forth. I wandered the rides in the park built for small children, stretching to make moralistic connections wherever I could.

By the end of the day my nose was sunburned, my feet ached, and I felt weary but good. As we left the park, driving back toward our budget hotel, I saw something: a group of protestors holding up signs. “We Are the Dreamers, Save DACA,” the signs said. I only caught a flash of them before we were past. I looked them up later, and yes—there was a small protest staged at Disneyland that day to ask the US government to save the DACA program, which gave undocumented youths a legal pathway to go to college and work. The program had been in flux since the 2016 election, leaving millions vulnerable and scared and no path forward. The slogans affixed to pieces of wood and held up high in the air were literal signs for me that pierced through the sparkling bubble I’d been surrounded by all day.

There is a world of fairy tales, of the stories we tell and retell our children, and there is also the world of suffering. Perhaps they are more closely linked than we would like to believe. How can we start to live into this tension instead of ricocheting back and forth between fantasy and despair, the cycle of burnout and self-care?

I’m fascinated by the ethical tangles involved in taking vacations or indulgence or treating myself. On my ten-year anniversary I was forced to ask myself some hard questions: Is going to Disneyland my form of self-care? Is it something I “earned” by my hard work, by making money, by being overwhelmed with the world? Is it a place to celebrate, to enjoy time with my husband, to engage in nostalgia and let my inner child (who is only slightly less judgmental than my actual self) run free? Perhaps it’s all of that, and something more. I’ve learned that we don’t always understand our minds or the ways they work, but our desires can point to deeper longings.

Self-care is a concept I hear bandied about constantly, especially from privileged people. But often the conversation centers on consumerism (try this bubble bath or this glass of rosé and everything will be fine!) and never gets to the actual itch begging to be scratched. But I’ve also heard people wondering about how to best care for ourselves and others in a way that’s couched in an awareness of the realities of the world. How do we cope with things not being right, when we are exposed to the underbelly of the American dream? When we enter into relationship with people who have or who are suffering, and there’s no easy fix? What do we do when we start to despair, when our light starts to dim?

Learning from nondominant cultures is crucial to understanding our longings for self-care as really being deeper desires for true peace. As Audre Lorde, a prominent African American poet and activist, once wrote, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence; it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” Lorde did seek out avenues of self-care, but her goal was not to be cozy. Rather, her goal was surviving, thriving, and working toward justice. Writer Jamila Reddy, reflecting on Lorde’s words, takes it a step further by pointing out that taking care of oneself—by making doctor’s appointments, for example—will not always feel good. Self-care, she writes, “means I have to let myself grieve even though it hurts, or admit that I’m really not okay when I’d rather nobody know.”1 In other words, it involves the deeper work of inward character building and outward community building. It requires what Eugene Peterson calls “a long obedience in the same direction.”2 And it entails resilience, the long work of showing up, day in and day out, to see God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

Disneyland as a place of resilience building is a little far-fetched. And yet I am learning to pay attention to both the pleasure I found being immersed in the fantastical stories of my youth and the discord I felt when faced with the reality of the DACA protestors. I sometimes long to escape to a fantasy world where the good girl always wins and the bad villain is always punished; meanwhile, there are children who have grown up in my country who dream of being afforded basic citizenship privileges like the ability to work or go to college. What dreamers are we listening to?

The day after we went to Disneyland, we drove to another part of Los Angeles, a part that was surrounded by historical museums as well as the oldest street market in the city. We entered a nondescript corner building called Homeboy Industries, site of the largest gang-intervention and rehabilitation program in the United States. It’s a place made famous by Father Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest who started the program several decades ago. My husband and I toured the facilities, chatted with our guide (a former gang member) about his experiences, and ended by buying one of the best cinnamon rolls I have ever eaten in my life, lovingly handed to us by a man with tattoos running up and down his face. It was a few hours spent in another world—a world where both devastating things happen (gun violence, abuse, parental neglect, systematic oppression) and also miracles are expected and celebrated constantly. There were classes on trauma, parenting, yoga, and creative writing. There was a bakery and restaurant, a print shop, and a tattoo removal ministry. There was a culture of care and humor and a recognition of who the experts were in the space: the people who continued to practice resurrection, every day, believing themselves to be loved by God—the truly radical belief that can change our world.

Outside Homeboy Industries there’s a word spray-painted next to a pair of angel wings. It’s the word that Father Boyle is obsessed with: kinship. Father Boyle is not a fan of self-care; he, like many others, sees burnout coming from a position of the savior complex. When we engage in helping or serving people from a position of hierarchy, where we take on the tasks best left for God, we can become overwhelmed. But kinship—being intimately connected with another person—changes the equation. Father Boyle’s aim in life is to seek a compassion that stands in awe at what people have to carry rather than in judgment at how they carry it. Father Boyle engages in regular rhythms and routines of resilience: prayer, retreats, resting when he needs to, but relationships based on compassion, mutuality, and awe don’t lead to burnout. Instead, they are the building blocks of a life where delight is just as likely to surprise you as suffering.

Lisa Sharon Harper, author of The Very Good Gospel, writes that the Greek word splanchnizomai, translated in the New Testament as “compassion,” means to be “moved from the bowels,” to feel the suffering of another in the depths of your being. Perhaps the next time we feel the need for some self-care we can take a moment to consider this. What if there is real grief for the world that we need to be addressing? Harper, a tireless advocate for justice, is also someone who can rock a good red lipstick and celebrate joy where she finds it. But she is adamant that Christians need to move away from charity and compassion work (individuals and communities giving out of their abundance) and toward community development and justice work, where oppressive systems and policies are changed. Instead of handing out sandwiches to hungry folks twice a week, what if a church helped start a food co-op in the community? This approach requires relationship, listening, and asking questions about the conditions that create hunger and food scarcity, and then changing those systems. Inherent in this type of work is the desire for justice, which can often look like privileged communities recognizing how they have been complicit or even profited from inequality.

As I sat at the Homeboy Cafe and ate that cinnamon roll dripping with frosting, surrounded by tourists and former gang members and neighborhood regulars, I realized something: self-care is not about numbing us from the realities of the world. Instead, it’s about learning how to be resilient in the face of this glorious mess of fractured kinship we inherited from each other.

I think of the women I know who have experienced forced migration, who have survived the deaths of their families, their dreams, their cultures, their land. Who have and continue to scratch out their demand for dignity in a world that only wants to silence, demean, and other them. And I think of the countless feasts these women have made for me and others. I think of the joy taken in rice perfectly cooked, platters of nuts artfully arranged, a can of mango juice thrust into my hands the moment I take a seat on the couch. I have been changed by the hospitality I have received in the kitchens of apartments where people were starting over after their worlds had ended. I have had my sadness transformed into awe and gratitude by watching another move forward with resilience, even joy. They remind me to pay attention to delight.

I’m working these little muscles slowly. I notice cakes made with too much frosting and too many sprinkles. Children receiving free electric-green beanies at school one day and streaming home in a mass, looking like a burst of fireflies. My daughter absentmindedly twirling a curl of her hair as she giggles at the exploits of a Garfield cartoon. My son bursting into my room at 6 a.m., ready to start the day with a few minutes of snuggling. My husband texting me stupid jokes only we will get, the flush of insular and secret and solitary love. Dance parties to disco music, an inexplicable family favorite. Leaving Christmas lights up a little longer than necessary simply because they brighten the dark months. Petting my cat and marveling at the soft gray fur, the complexity of his eyes.

Living into this commitment will look different for everyone. It can mean creating more opportunities for feasting together or simply taking a moment to count your blessings before you fall asleep at night. Celebrating, even in the midst of injustice and pain, is a time-honored tradition of reimagining a new world by living into joy in the here and now with those who have been exiled as our guides. In the end we don’t just want to dismantle the walls, the systems, the hierarchies, the exploitation in the world. We want to build something new, something centered on a kingdom that doesn’t roll in with tanks but comes as a gigantic party: the wedding feast to end all feasts. What we all want is the happiest place on earth. Then, and only then, our kinship will finally be made real in the place where everyone, not just some, gets to experience the magic of the new creation.