“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” — Romans 12:21

By now you’ve likely seen hundreds of memes and short form videos denouncing the behavior of President Trump and Vice President Vance in their meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky in the White House oval office on Friday the 28th of February 2025. I have too. I have watched grown men and women weeping in shock and shame; others yelling at the screen in anger and disgust. I’ve read post after post expressing outrage and disbelief that the men occupying the highest offices of our nation could behave in such a way to a visiting dignitary, and shame over watching the great spirit of who we believe we are as a people get dragged through the sewage of personal pettiness and small-minded manipulations.

To be clear: This now infamous encounter between Trump, Vance, and Zelensky was a trauma-inducing event. It traumatized us. And by us, I mean most Americans, certainly, but also millions of others in nations across the world. I have many friends who tell me they cannot watch the debacle all the way through because of the pain and grief and anger and shame that overwhelms them when they try. I have other friends who are currently trying very hard to pretend it wasn’t that bad or it isn’t that big of a deal, which is of course also a trauma response, and one I know personally quite well.

But it was a big deal. And we are traumatized by it.

In all of my grief-scrolling on Friday, there was one voice that stood out from all the rest. It came from Heather Cox Richardson, a history professor at Boston College. This is what she said:

“One of the really important things to remember going forward as we fear the rise of authoritarianism in the United States [is this]: Authoritarians cannot rise if there are strong communities, and people are acting with joy. That is, you need despair and anger in order for an authoritarian to rise. Think of the language that we hear from MAGA Republicans, and how angry they are all the time. It’s okay to say, ‘I’m not going to pay attention to politics for a while.’ But it’s not okay to stop bringing your best to the world. Whatever those things are that you bring to the community, do them, and do them with joy. And don’t stop doing the things you love because you’re scared. Because that actually is a form of resistance. Showing up and doing things you love says to an authoritarian: ‘You have no place to root here.’ And that’s going to be really important going forward.”

In the parlance of my Christian upbringing, we call that “operating in the opposite spirit.” Essentially, it is the belief that you cannot overcome evil using the same weapons that evil employs. It is this same principle Dr. King espoused when he declared these now famous words in a sermon called "Loving Your Enemies" at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, on the 17th of November, 1957.

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

I recently revisited the great Terrence Malick film “A Hidden Life,” the story of an Austrian man of faith who refused to fight for the Nazis in World War II, and was martyred for it. It is a quiet film, but profoundly powerful. If you have not seen it, I recommend you do. It’s based on a true story, and it has got me wrestling with a question that I cannot shake:

My buddy Tim and I passed this question back and forth between us last week. Most of you already know I am a coach. Well, Tim is a spiritual director, and the two of us have been crafting a vibrant, ongoing conversation every week for more than two decades now. When you hold space with another man for that many years, the words you share take on a certain aged quality, like fine wine. There’s a patina to the sculpture of our friendship now. Sometimes when we hold it up to the light, it offers up reflections that surprise us both.

I came to the call with my question. Tim came to the call eager to share the title of a book he’d recently discovered: Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. Kerouac is one of several creative mystics we both admire. The title definitely captures the spirit of the man, a bright light burning in the conforming dark of his post World War II days. Through Kerouac’s writing, he cried out for the release of a wild and dangerous kind of freedom. He advocated for the fundamental human right to be drunk with joy, to experience life as something untamable, astonishing, and gloriously miraculous, far more holy than the dull two-bit “Leave It To Beaver” roles cast for him by the society into which he was born. Kerouac probably never heard of “operating in the opposite spirit.” But he most definitely knew what it meant.

The book title immediately struck me as a more resonant way to frame my question:

I’ve seen a lot of people burning furiously over the past several days, all for very good and understandable reasons. But I’m not sure I’ve seen many who were burning beautifully, by which I mean I’ve not seen many whose words or actions have lighted the way to anything new. Don’t misunderstand. I think it is right to give voice to our collective trauma, to declare the wrongness of what happened, to name the violation for what it is. But outrage can only take us so far. It certainly cannot take us anywhere we haven’t already been for the past ten years or more.

I am as perplexed as anyone by this challenge. What does it mean exactly to burn furiously beautiful in these darkening days? That question haunts me even as I write it. Most days I find myself at a loss to answer it.

Still, there are a few things of which I have become convinced. Here is the first:

We cannot overcome evil on evil’s terms. We cannot win against evil by playing evil’s game. The way I see it, the moment you pick up the cards that evil has dealt you, you’ve already lost the hand. Evil thrives on chaos and confusion. Every time we respond reactively to the rapid-fire chaos of evil’s agenda, we inadvertently play into evil’s hand. We dance to the music that evil is playing. No matter how much reactive rage we muster, we cannot gain the advantage this way, because evil is still directing the music.

It’s like trying to douse the fires of chaos and confusion by throwing our own version of chaos and confusion into the flames. While such actions may be well-intentioned, they ultimately only feed into evil’s purpose. They only make the fire bigger.

I think this is in part what Jesus was pointing to when he gave this instruction to his followers:

“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as cunning as serpents and yet as innocent as doves.” — Matthew 10:16

The way I see it, the first necessary step to overcoming evil is to refuse to let evil set the terms of your engagement with it. You have to flip the script. Refuse to engage the chaos and confusion reactively. Instead, grab the pen, and take charge of the narrative. Rather than solely being against the chaos, what exactly are you for? Joy? Community? Service? Integrity? Love? Whatever it is, let your soul burn furiously beautiful for that. Make your story about that. Let that be the music that makes your soul dance.

But then, of course, there’s the matter of all that chaos and confusion that evil keeps throwing your way. What do you do with it? How do you engage it? How do you transcend it? How do you practically overcome it day by day?

I’m still fumbling my way toward meaningful answers to those questions. But I have come to believe that the answers live at that subtle intersection between cunning and innocence that Jesus pointed to. We need to get wise to what evil is doing in our midst: what it’s after, how it works, how it hooks people into doing its bidding. At the same time, we must refuse to use any of its methods or tools, even in our efforts to resist it. Instead, we must commit ourselves to a different path, a path of love and light, and the firm belief that the Christian scriptures are actually true when they say things like “Mercy triumphs over judgment,” and “The greatest of these is love.”

I turn again to Dr. King, who I think understood this principle better than any leader in American history since Lincoln himself. King’s vision for the “Beloved Community” was never cast as some utopian ideal, but was and is a fully attainable vision of a society in which love and trust triumph over fear and hatred. As he knew then, so we know now: this vision can only happen when a critical mass of people within the society refuse to live in fear and hatred, but instead choose to follow the more courageous path of love and trust.

It doesn’t have to be everyone. It doesn’t even have to be a majority. Most sociological research suggests you only need about twenty-five percent of a population to shift in order to create a tipping point for the culture at large. Of course, I can’t control how anyone else chooses to respond to the growing chaos and confusion of these days. But I can control how I respond. I can choose my own path. And I can, maybe, inspire others to walk that path with me.

In that spirit, I’d like to share a few practices that are helping me find my own way to burn furiously beautiful in these darkening days. Maybe they can help you find your way to do the same.

1. Establish a Regular Grounding Practice. There really are only a few things that I have complete control over in this life, and all of them exist exclusively in this present moment. My thoughts, my beliefs, my attitudes, and my actions—these are all I have full autonomy over, and they exist nowhere else but right here, and right now. So when a fresh wave of chaos and confusion comes crashing over the world, my first order of business is to ground myself in this present moment, and to surrender everything I see happening that I cannot control. Then, I remind myself of the few but mighty things I can control—what I spend time thinking about, what I believe, my attitude or perspective, and the actions I take. I consciously let go of any reactive tendencies I feel rising up inside me—every urge to lash out, or join the angry mob, or collapse into numb despair—and turn my heart instead toward curiosity. I listen to whatever is unfolding out there in the mad fray. I pay attention. I take note of everything I can. I name what I see. I make it my task to gather intelligence from a place of unattached curiosity. I ponder this information, looking for insights and connections that can help me as I move to the next practice.

2. Find Cracks in the Chaos You Can Leverage for Good. As I survey all the chaos and confusion, and everyone’s reaction to it, I ask myself: What is the deeper sorrow, or fear, or grief hiding beneath the froth of everyone’s reactivity? How could I speak to that deeper need in a way that undermines the chaos? Then I look to the perpetrators. For them, I ask: What is the real fear, or shame, or belief that they are hiding underneath all of that pompous bluster? How could I speak to that deeper truth in a way that exposes the evil for what it really is? This is where empathy becomes a powerful ally for me, because it helps me name the sometimes very specific thing another person or group needs to hear for their eyes to finally open to the lies they have believed. Unlike what some foolish men have recently claimed, such empathy is not a sin; to the contrary, it is the door to redemption.

One example: I think of the scene in “Good Will Hunting” where Sean assures Will, forcefully and with stubborn repetition, that the abuse he suffered was not his fault.

It’s only four minutes, and if you watch it, you’ll see what I mean. Sean found a crack in Will’s chaos he could leverage, and because Sean’s voice was powered by love, it was strong enough to break through decades of Will’s defenses.

Another example: I also think of this image, from the 9th of July in 2016, in Baton Rouge. The woman is Ieshia Evans, an American mother, 35 at the time. This was her first time attending a protest against police violence. But when she refused to vacate the street, and the riot police came to grab her, she neither shrank back, nor made any aggressive move against them. She simply stood her ground, and said nothing.

“It was silence,” she explained later, that stopped them. “Sometimes silence speaks volumes.”

The image has stayed with me ever since that day. To me, it’s an elegant example of what it looks like to burn furiously beautiful. Evans found a crack in the chaos, a non-evil way to leverage the moment. She went beneath the surface frenzy to understand what was really going on. Underneath their cultural roles, those riot police were decent men who did not want to be seen as abusive toward women. Armed with this simple truth, she showed up. She took action. She did not hide. She put her heart and body on the line.

A third example: I think of Jesus, on the day he asked the Samaritan woman at the well for a drink of water. You can read story here (John 4:1-42), but the gist of it is that Jews and Samaritans in those days avoided one another whenever they could because of their harsh religious judgments toward each other, and men did not speak to women in public anyway because it was considered unseemly, and it was even more unseemly in this case as the Samaritan woman was likely an outcast in her own village because she came to draw water at noon instead of early in the morning when all the other women would be there. But Jesus saw a crack in all that cultural chaos, and pressed right through it to ask her for a drink of water from the well.

The conversation that followed impacted her so profoundly she ran to the village, and convinced other Samaritans to come and hear what Jesus had to say. That, in turn, raised such a restorative ruckus that he ended up staying in that village two more days. “And because of his words many more became believers” (John 4:41).

To me, that’s just Jesus burning furiously beautiful the way he always does. He found a crack in the chaos, a loving way to leverage the moment. Rather than follow the norms of the day, he went beneath the surface, understanding that all those rules regarding religious dogmas and social gameplay were not the point at all, but something deeper was. Armed with this truth, he showed up. He took action. He did not hide. He put his heart and life on the line.

That’s the nature of the work I think we’re all called to now. That’s the “good trouble” we’re meant to get into. At least, that’s what it is to me. It’s definitely not as easy as ignoring the issue, or numbing out, or stewing in outrage as you doom scroll along with the masses. But it is cunning. And it is innocent. And it is very, very good.

And, I believe, it holds the power to make a real difference.

A Few Quotes

“The most important hour is always the present. The most significant person is precisely the one sitting across from you right now. The most necessary work is always love.” — Meister Eckhart

“Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to go unbuild walls.” ― Ursula Le Guin

“Freedom is actually a bigger game than power. Power is about what you can control. Freedom is about what you can unleash.” — Harriet Rubin

“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” — James Baldwin

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” — R. Buckminster Fuller

A Final Practice

One more thing. The next time you burn furiously beautiful, take some time after to do this:

3. Retreat, Recover, and Return to Your Passion. With every new exposure comes a necessary retreat, and a time of recovery. Return to yourself, and the solidity of your grounding practice. Listen closely to your soul, and heed what it tells you.

I have a practice for this, too, if you’re interested. You’ll find it here. (It’s free to download.) Then, once you have recentered, return to your primary work, the thing that you are for, the beauty you mean to make real in the world. Go do that for a while, for as long as you can, until the next wave of madness comes cresting over the hill.

May we each find our own way to burn furiously beautiful in the coming days. Just keep looking for those cracks in the chaos, and when you see one, leverage your love right there to bend the world just a little bit back toward the light.

“You see, idealism detached from action is just a dream. But idealism allied with pragmatism, with rolling up your sleeves and making the world bend a bit, is very exciting. It's very real. It's very strong, and it's very present.” — Bono