A
collective heaviness is caving in on us.
With terrorism striking even holy Islamic sites, countries advising
their citizens not to travel to the U.S. or wear traditional clothing here, many churches
and Christian institutions now urging their members to rush out to get
concealed carry permits, and people of color afraid to leave their homes lest
they be pulled over for a driving infraction only to be shot in cold blood,
fear has become an epidemic.
Fear is
creeping in, over, through, and around us and its darkness is strangling the
light. Can you feel it?
Civilians
cower in a society where we are vulnerable to being gunned down even in
shopping malls, movie theaters, night clubs, peaceful protests, church prayer
meetings and elementary schools.
Officers who have vowed to protect, defend and secure our safety are murdered, but cringe when they hear of yet another cop that has dragged their once heroic
reputation into the mire.
Politicians bumble along with empty words.
People of
color cry out “See! Do you see NOW? When
are you going to get it?”
Some white
people are learning to live with new-found sight and are begging for something
to DO (which, if we’re honest, feels about as useful as dad putting the proverbial
pot of water on to boil while the woman writhes in labor pains).
And the
majority of whites still choose to log out of Facebook and news apps or switch
off the T.V. to ignore what only makes them feel powerless and guilty, because “What
can I, a stay-at-home mom, financial advisor, or construction worker actually
do to help anyway?”
We are
grasping for an elusive hope, wrestling with despair and choking for fresh air. We either let anger crush us or we take the
easy way out and run away, hide and pretend the suffering doesn’t exist. I know.
I’m a recovering runaway myself.
But there is another way.
Gregory
Boyle is an American Jesuit priest who has spent the past 25 years working in
one of the most gang-riddled areas of the United States. He has buried more than one hundred gang
members over the course of his time in L.A.—often just as they have begun to
clean up their lives. He has had every reason
to despair and lose hope. In fact, it
was after being diagnosed with cancer that he finally decided to write a book
about his experiences. Yet his memoir, Tattoos on the Heart, includes an entire
chapter not on hopelessness, but on delight.
He says,
“Dorothy Day
loved to quote Ruskin, who urged us all to the ‘Duty to Delight.’ It was an
admonition, really, to be watchful for the hilarious and heartwarming, the silly
and the sublime. This way will not pass
again, and so there is a duty to be mindful of that which delights and keeps
joy at the center, distilled from all that happens to us in a day” (p. 148).
I admit that
I’ve judged those on social media that have seemed to go on with their daily
lives and continue to post pictures of their kid’s messy first-food faces,
family vacations, ridiculous memes and silly quotes during a week when much of
America has been in mourning. And yet
perhaps this is their way of coping while so much of the world has been
paralyzed by grief and fear.
Last week
after watching the video of Philando Castile bleeding to death in his car while
his fiance’s four-year old daughter sat in the back of the car and a cop’s
shaky gun spoke to the world’s horrified onlookers, I found solace not in
taking to the streets protesting, writing inflammatory Facebook messages or
canvasing my neighborhood with #Blacklivesmatter pamphlets.
Instead, I eased my 8-month-pregnant
body into a lawn chair in our backyard as my two and four-year-old frolicked
around shirtless in the silently drifting cottonwood seeds. My hand on my belly, my unborn son
twisted and turned and I amusedly watched my bump ripple with life. I lay my head back, closed my eyes, and drank
in the musical laughter of my innocent children and allowed the summer Colorado
sun to press her hot hand on my face.
And just as a duty is sometimes perfunctorily done, I dutifully gave
thanks for that solitary moment.
Thomas
Merton writes, “No despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain
the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there...” There is delight to be had. It is our duty to notice and give thanks for
it even when it is the last thing we feel like doing. It is our duty to delight.
A music
director sings this song in dark days,
“God is our
refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth
should change and though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea; though
its waters roar and foam, though the mountains quake at is swelling pride. There is a river whose streams make glad the
city of God, the holy dwelling places of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, we will not be
moved; God will help her when morning dawns.
The nations made an uproar, the kingdoms tottered; He raised His voice, the
earth melted. The Lord of hosts is with
us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold. Selah.”
Psalm 46: 1-7
God is still
in our midst. He is with us. He is our stronghold. His streams of gladness cut through our weary
land. Selah. Pause and rest in that truth.
We have a
duty not to run away, bury our heads in the ground or shield ourselves from
suffering just because we don’t like how it makes us feel. How can we love when we have our eyes
squeezed shut? Don’t turn off the news,
but sit with it, internalize it, and then talk to God about it. Is there anything He wants you do?
It is
our duty to see.
And we have a duty to
act when it is in our power to do so.
But we also
have a duty to delight. And it is a
beauty-from-ashes kind of delight. A
resurrection song that rings out only as we die to our self-centeredness and
the world’s empty promises of peace. Ours
is a peace in spite of, not because of. It’s a joy that skims along the surface of the
storm, catching the wind, riding it and finding that—amazingly--it’s possible
not to sink after all. But this is only
through hope in Someone that keeps us from being trampled by fear.
In the hours
before Jesus is crucified, He speaks these words to his followers, “Therefore
you too have grief now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice,
and no one will take your joy away from you” (Jn. 16:22).
No one. Nothing.
Will take your joy away from you.
Do you believe that?
Labels: fear, hope, race
