The Departure Lounge

Finding the exits and entering new communities is our theme for 2025

I’m wrapping up our 2024 theme of belonging a little bit early. Partly because I pretty much sucked at it.

Sort of, anyway. It was never my intention to only write about that one thing or to come up with some grand unified theory of belonging or to create a movement here on my little Substack. It was just something I wanted to explore and ruminate on and share about what I learned. Which I did do, and if you missed those posts, they are all tagged with “Belonging.”

We aren’t done with belonging, of course. Belonging is an essential human need. And it will be a big theme in what I will focus on now—Leaving. Walking out. Finding the exits. Voting with your feet. ¹

To do that, you’ll need to find new belonging on the other side. So we’ll keep revisiting this. But right now, it seems somewhat naive to assume All We Need is Love and to focus on human connection, bridging divides, helping people feel at home.

The truth is a lot of people feel too at home and they belong too well in places and with people they really need to leave behind. That the rest of us really, really need them to leave behind.

I’m not just talking about politics or religion. I am talking about that, and I will keep writing about that. But I’m also talking more broadly, about the need each of us has to shed skins that don’t fit and remove obstacles in our paths and adjust to new realities so that we can be the people we were born to be and give the contributions that will benefit the collective and move this humanity thing along a good path. Each of us pour our imperceptible drops into a mighty ocean with the faith that it all adds up to something and leads somewhere and has an impact somehow that none of us can see. Maybe the true and pure and beneficial drops can outnumber the fearful, damaged, destructive ones and become a flow instead of a flood.

Some people will never arrive. Because they refuse to leave. And to be blunt with you, I’ve given up trying to get through to the deluded colluders, those who just can’t see the image in the blur, those who have already missed the boat. I will try my best to be kind to them, but I won’t lie to them or to myself about their ability to see the light. I need to let them go once and for all and write them off as a lost cause.

But there are already a lot of us who have left things behind—churches and political parties and jobs and relationships. In fact, I believe we as a society are in the midst of A Great Departure, one of those tipping points in history in which the game changes and the tables turn and the arc bends. I am wildly optimistic about the long run.

But the short run scares the sh*t out of me. Because it is scary. Change is scary. The backlash to change is absolutely terrifying.

And there are still a lot of people paralyzed by fear. There are still a lot of people quietly lingering near exits they should walk through. They are still hoping to put their heads down and ride out this deeply personal historical-cultural-political-religious moment without disruption. There is a lot of tongue-biting and going-with-the-flow and waiting it out.

Psst, not making a decision is a making decision.

And I get it. There are people out there for whom a departure costs more than they have to pay. Not all departures are equal. Not all departures are easy. Not all are even possible. And some of them aren’t voluntary either. All of them are disruptive deaths of some kind.

But I know for a fact that they are a whole lot easier when you have friends and traveling companions giving you courage, sustenance, direction, and wisdom along the way.

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I have left so many times. I have changed countries and cultures and families and friends and marriages and careers and faiths.

I’m about to do it again. In less than three weeks, I will walk out of doors for the last time that I have walked in and out of, over and over and over again, for almost two decades.

I chose this departure, I am certain about it, and I am excited about it. But it’s still an ending. It’s still a loss of an identity, a community, a part of myself that I’ve honed and polished and in which I’ve taken pride and comfort.

Most of my departures have been much harder. Excruciating even. When I left home for boarding school at 10. When I left Kenya for America at 17. When I left my first marriage at 27.

That one almost killed me. I wanted out badly, for years and years. I needed out, for my own health, maybe eventually for my very life. But leaving turned everything in me upside down. I literally thought I would go to hell.

When I finally knew I had to leave, I leaned on true friends to help me find the exits. I leaned on Sarah and Jana, who showed up from another state with a U-Haul to pack up my belongings. I leaned on Charlie and Angie, whose confrontation with death made me want to live. I leaned on Mark, whose office down the hall from mine was where I hid and refueled and sometimes cried and got myself together. I leaned on Bethany and Elisa and Scot and Heather and Linda and Dan and Lorien and Jeff and Christina and Professor Shalhope and so many others.

And I leaned on writers who had the courage to put ideas out into the world that helped me realize I had been looking at the God of the universe through a tiny pinhole. Who made me see that the bars on my jail cell were an optical illusion a leap of faith would expose. Like Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade scattering pebbles across a hidden path.

Rob Bell. Rachel Held Evans. Peter Enns. Marcus Borg. Brian McLaren. Anne LaMott. Diana Butler Bass. Among others.

(Gotta pause here so I can pinch myself over the fact that Diana is now my real life friend! Stop it life, you are just too gorgeous sometimes).

The thing I love about creative endeavors—any process by which you put something tangible out into the world that did not previously exist—is that you don’t know what impact they will have. If any, and sometimes, even a lot of the time, there may be almost none.

But you never know. That dish you cooked or that piece you painted or that sweater you knitted or that stupid video you made or that house you remodeled might imprint some joy and love onto someone else’s heart that they pass on and on and on. It might start a friendship. It might heal a hurt or offer a laugh or spark an idea or perform a miracle.

(Side note: Do I believe in miracles? You bet. WE are the miracles.)

(Side note #2, an entire universe of friendships that have helped inspire and enable my next chapter in life began in large measure when I made this absolutely ridiculous video. The gifts keep on multiplying.)

You just don’t know who the crumbs you scatter behind you will feed. You never know where things will land, and who they will land with, and for what purpose. And you don’t have to. You just keep putting what’s in your heart and mind out there. And you keep doing the inner work to ensure your heart and mind are rooted in truth, love, humility, curiosity, knowledge, and wisdom. Never assume you can coast on your goodness. Keep interrogating yourself. And keep putting yourself out there.

So this next year, I’m going to put out there stories and thoughts and experiences of Departure, in hopes someone, anyone who desperately needs to leave will find some courage and faith and hope. That some pebbles will scatter across a previously invisible path.

Because on the other side of Leaving is Arriving. And on the other side of Losing is Finding. And on the other side of Exile is Refuge.

It’s time to go.

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One last tidbit for today—One group of people who desperately need to get going, in my opinion, are white evangelicals. When it comes to this culture, I have wavered about whether it’s better for good folks to stay and fight or for them to abandon and rebuild. I will still not judge and continue to support those who think the former is possible, but personally, I’m out of optimism. I would urge anyone and everyone in that culture who is troubled and discontented to go ahead and depart. I have come to the sad conclusion that nothing but mass exodus will bring change. I’ll be talking a lot more about this, but for now, I’ll leave you with an essay I wrote a while ago with some lessons learned in my own flight.

Grace and peace, friends. Godspeed. Go well.

1. I must credit the estimable Ben Wittes for helping me come up with this idea. Just another new friend that has truly helped change my life the last several years.