|
What can we do when the going seems impossibly
rough, hope appears in short supply, no easy answers are on the radar and—on
top of everything else—we feel darned tired.
Let me suggest a few answers.
Keep in mind that things aren’t
necessarily worse than they “used to be.” Virtually every generation has a
few of its own Armaggedon-like moments and its own particular deaths and
resurrections.
When one sees an immense iceberg
looming from one’s Titanic deck, I think the functional word of advice is:
simplify. Strip to essentials. Clearly, this is not a moment to deal with
complex contradictions. Nor is it an occasion to act like a centipede lying
on its back with feet spinning in the air. One or two decisions are all that
are left. Yet they might save one’s life.
Difficult times can be individual or
communal—or both. Individual can range from dissolution of a long
relationship to being fired, news of a serious illness to death of a loved
one, losing one’s home to finding that one’s retirement income is gone.
Communal can range from living in wartime instead of peacetime,
confrontation by violence and terror, environmental disaster, breakdown in
areas of public health and education, financial chaos, and loss of communal
bonds of morality and ethics.
My own approach in such a situation is
to prioritize. Be centered in prayer. Don’t attempt to cope with six, ten or
twelve problems. Identify one or two. Concentrate. Is there an opening or
option? Space to breathe, an object to focus on, room to move?
If I seem absolutely discombobulated,
can I wait a moment? I’m fond of a Tibetan Buddhist saying: “Do you have the
patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you
remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?” Such patience can
give clarity, letting options and alternatives emerge.
This leads directly from a strictly
individual or solitary approach to enter into community and search for
communal responses and answers. When I spent time in the Taize Community in
France in l957, I was greatly assisted by these thoughts in the community’s
rule: “Choose to live joyfully now. Live joyfully with what we have now.
Live joyfully with the others who are present now. Try to avoid being
obsessed by frustration, anxiety, and stress.” This is incredibly useful
when we find ourselves bowed down by fears and losses and a sense that hope
is diminishing.
I feel a matter of urgent importance is to concentrate on the next step
instead of the complete journey. What can I do right now? How may I live in
the present and not let it escape me? If I refuse to focus on the present
moment I lose touch with possibility.
A touching example of this can be found
in Vittorio De Sica’s classic film “Umberto D.” We see that everything is at
a dead end and there is no more hope of anyone’s getting help from anybody
else. At this moment two or three people, acting together, had a chance to
solve their problems. But they didn’t take it. They didn’t understand one
another or communicate with each other. One might say they chose death over
life.
What they surrendered was possibility.
They also acted without faith. Faith engenders possibility. Difficult times
offer us a unique possibility to become truly authentic persons. How? By
moving beyond what we assumed were our limitations. We can grow, change,
surrender fears, accept the example of Jesus in human life, and allow God to
move freely in our lives.
These lines from Christopher Fry’s play
A Sleep of Prisoners speak poignantly and powerfully to our condition now:
Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul men ever took.
We have a choice. We can allow ourselves to be numbed and rendered
incapacitated by terrible events that appear to be bigger than life or we
can reaffirm our faith, our hope, our love, and thank God our time is now.
And act upon it by being willing to take the longest stride of soul we’ve
ever done. So, what can we do when the going seems impossibly rough?
Quite a lot. |
"You and Me" means exactly that. You're
invited to write and share your questions and concerns. While each message
will not be personally acknowledged due to the volume of mail, you may see
your thoughts in print.
Please write to
"You and Me"
in care of
The Episcopal News,
PO Box 512164,
Los Angeles, CA 90051 The
inaugural
You and Me column is archived
here |
