INSPIRATION

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Are you feeling dispirited? Tired and low on energy? Are the stress of worry and anxiety sapping your spirit?

Me too.  Some days are just about more than I can take. Senseless dying. Senseless killing. I go along and think I am coping well and then I hit the wall. 

And then I get a call. It is Virginia. She lost her husband (my mentor) a couple of years ago. We keep in touch. There she is, on FaceTime. Smiling, asking how I am doing. At 98, she lives in the home she shared with her husband. She has been outside working in the yard.

I inquire about her health and how she is getting along in this time of isolation. She exercises with the Y on Zoom every morning at 8:00 a.m.  She and her writing partner are updating one of the books they wrote some years ago. It is a book on care for people with dementia. ( After raising 5 children and being a minister’s wife for 40 years, she went back to school at 65, got her masters in gerontology, developed a new way of helping people with Alzheimers, wrote books, lectured all over the world, and is now updating her book).

Oh, and she has also been meeting with the committee she is on to help make her city dementia friendly. And she is also active in her church. She then tells me about the theology book she is reading.

And when we hang up, I realize that my dispirited self has been inspirited. Inspiration has suddenly taken up residence in one of the rooms of my soul. I can inhale more deeply. My soul sees more light.

How is it that Virginia inspires me? Certainly her life and her achievements are part of it. I have always wanted to be like her when I grow up.

But, I think it is more. I think it is how she has, through most of the wars of this and the last century, through riots and pandemics, through stresses and joys of parenting, through threats to her family because they have always welcomed all, through the death of her son and her husband, through health concerns and radical social changes in her life time, through all that life offers, Virginia still gets up every morning and lives fully, rich with compassion.  She cares about the world and continues to do all she can to improve the lives of others.

And I think, “If she can do that, so can I.” I still have breath. I can still inhale. I can think and hope and pray. I can cry out and work for justice, for equity.  I can share and smile. I can still contribute. My dispirited soul is, at least for a while, spirited.  

Virginia inspires me.  When you are dispirited, who inspires you?

BLAME

Interesting things happen to groups in crises. In the face of devastating losses groups of people intuitively react to try to survive in the absence of what has been lost.

The first response is usually to come together. When there has been a threat to the well-being of the group, the impulse is to gather with people who share our sense of threat and pool our resources.  “We are in this together.”  There is often a deepened sense of connection as we rely on each other to get our balance and allay our fears.

We have seen this response in the COVID 19 crisis. Much has been written about how communities of people are coming together to provide what is needed. By the millions we have sheltered in place to keep our health-care systems from being overwhelmed. We have reached out to each other with encouragement and care.

But, there is also another impulse at work when groups are threatened. That is guilt. Losses of significant people and things in our lives evoke a desire to find out who is to blame for our loss.  Because we are designed to live together and because we know that we survive together, when there is a threat, we impulsively begin to seek out who caused our loss.

This is also happening in our current crisis. There is a lot of finger pointing. Some look to others to blame for our circumstance.  Some look to ourselves for not being prepared. Some look to those who are different from us. Others look to those inside our group who didn’t respond the way we thought they should. Someone must be guilty. Someone must be blamed.

Part of this drive is so that we can focus our anger somewhere. The adrenaline that pumps through our system to help us protect ourselves has to go somewhere. Anger is that general energy to survive that wants to focus itself on what is threatening us. This energy is a good thing because it helps us protect ourselves against future threat. We need to discover the weaknesses within our survival system so that we can prevent future threats.

But, the danger of this blaming is that it can also tear us apart. Out of our fear, we can create perceived enemies within our own group. We vilify others. We create scapegoats. We are tempted to believe that our political adversaries are our enemy. The social fabric of a group can become tattered and weaving it back together can be extremely difficult.

I am impulsively reaching out my hand and heart to those who suffer because we are in this together. I also want to know who is responsible for this devastation. I want to protect myself and those I love from future loss. 

With each of these impulses alive in me, I am trying to moderate my responses so that I don’t contribute to the further tearing apart of the social fabric that sustains us. I am trying to keep my heart from hardening toward those I want to blame so that as the rebuilding our world begins I will not be so alienated from my fellow citizens that I cannot contribute to it in a positive way.

WHISPERS OF HOPE

Stories can sustain us. As we have been walking through this desert of COVID 19, we have been hearing stories. Stories of despair. Stories of hope. Stories from around the world as people experience loss, courage, despair, hope.

I have been revisiting stories that provide me strength in my times of confusion. I remember stories of my Dad who lost his father when he was 16 during the Great Depression . He inherited the responsibility for taking care of his mother. He hopped freight trains, travelled across the Great Plains to work in a CCC camp planting trees in Colorado. In poverty and responsibility he did what he had to do to provide care and survival. He lived because he loved.

And as a Christian I am remembering stories of our spiritual forbearers. Moses’ loving mother placing her baby in a basket and putting him in the river to give him a potential future.  Jacob going to meet his alienated brother, wrestling with the angel of fear and unknowing at Jabbock.  Jesus, in the garden, wrestling with loss of control and an unknown future as he waits for his execution.  Women staring in an empty tomb uncertain where to turn. The Disciples, sent into the world without the presence of their physical leader. In empty space of unknown they lived because they loved.

As I rehearse these stories I am struck by what they have in common. They are all stories of a disruption of plans and dreams. They are crises caused by loss of something that mattered. They are empty spaces filled with questions about the unknown.  And, they are stories about people growing spiritually. They are whispers of hope.

Any crisis is not only physical.  But, it is also a crisis of spirit. How do we live? How do we move forward when we don’t have what we once had? What do we value? What is the best way forward? How many miss-steps can I take and still forgive myself and move forward?

By rehearsing these stories of courage in the face of empty spaces, I think, “If they can do it, maybe I can too.” I don’t always feel that I can handle this. But in the storehouse of my memory, I have known others who have survived.  I hear my Dad whisper me hope. I have been fed on stories of women and men living into the questions that inhabit the unknown future. I hear a choir softly singing me hope. 

And I can get up and take another step into that future with hope that I will have strength for the step beyond the next one.

Lean into the Questions

I want to share with you today a reflection that was published by the Upper Room on Sunday, May 10. I hope it contributes to your journey of discovery in this time of COVID 19.  

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Today's Reflection

Being in touch with our anger and fear and anxiety is a vital part of growing spiritually. To grow spiritually requires centering our lives in that which can sustain us in the midst of the changing world around us. Spiritual strength is the ability to stay on course even when the winds of threat and fear would knock us off. If we are in touch with our fears and our anger, then we are more aware of what we are putting our trust in. … To trust in the energy of life that creates and re-creates us, ever calling us into a new world, is to be defined by that which has eternal qualities.

—Dan Moseley, Lose, Love, Live: The Spiritual Gifts of Loss and Change(Upper Room Books, 2011)

Today's Question

What fear and anger do you need to acknowledge today? Join the conversation.

Today's Scripture

When I am afraid,

I put my trust in you.

—Psalm 56:3 (NRSV)

Prayer for the Week

Loving God, gather us together and bring us comfort like a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings.

Submit your prayer to The Upper Room.

Something More

On this Mother’s Day, celebrate Mom by making a donation to The Upper Room in her honor or memory. Give today.

Lectionary Readings

(Courtesy of Vanderbilt Divinity Library)

Acts 7:55-60Psalm 31:1-5, 15-161 Peter 2:2-10John 14:1-14

Looking for lectionary-based resources? Learn more about The Upper Room Disciplines.

CHOICE

It was only a few pages from light to dark. Sunday morning, I settle down with my coffee and the Indianapolis Star. Coronavirus has hijacked my consciousness.

Then, light. An article about Hannah Li, a college student who wanted to help kids whose schooling had been interrupted by this crisis. She recruited other college students and created Knowledge Share, a group to tutor kids who needed extra help math, science, social studies, history, English, computer science.

Wow! Empty space created by a crisis — filled with light. A young woman moved by love to take action. My heart was lifted. Then, only a few pages later…an article about Susana Henriquez, mother of three children, 2,4, and 9. Her job of helping install floors in people’s homes has pretty much dried up. She is struggling. Rent, food, medicine? Our government has reached out to help millions of people devastated by this virus, but not Susana. Why? Because, her mother, who is undocumented, lives with her. And the CARES act excludes millions of US citizens from its help if an undocumented person shares their residence.

Wow! Such cruelty. Dark descended on my soul. My heart sank into anger and despair. The government supposedly representing me acting with such meanness.

I struggled. I prayed. Emotions…up one minute and down the next. This is the nature of a crisis. Our hearts and minds struggle to hold together the paradoxes of human existence. Light and dark cohabitate the human soul.

But, with all this confusion, losses of stability and normalcy create opportunity. We have a chance to make choices. We can choose light or we can choose dark.

We can choose the dark by giving into our fear. Our fear will drive us into ourselves and motivate us to exclude others. We can be swallowed by a sense of scarcity. Our fear can increase our cruelty. It will harden our hearts against those who might be different. It will make us vulnerable to manipulation by those who would fan the flames of prejudice and hate. We will lose our moral sensitivity to those whom God loves. Darkness can consume a fearful heart.

Or we can choose light. We can contribute love. We can hear the pain of others who are severely impacted by these devastating circumstances and do what we can to ease pain. We can give what we can. Some of us can give money and food. Some can give time and energy. Some can give insight and hope. Love is the light that can be given.

Love drives out fear. We each have a choice. Life beyond the crisis will be shaped by which choice we make now. I hope more of us choose love and light.