Finding Joy in a Suffering World

November 7, 2023

Beloved:


          How to keep a tender heart without being overwhelmed in times like these?  Times so full of violence and grief, in the world and in our own lives.  And what does it mean to be overwhelmed, exactly?  To be incapacitated?  To be of no use?  Or, to feel feelings we would rather not feel:  feelings like helplessness, frustration and rage at the shamelessness of humanity?
          These are the thoughts that turned over and over as I walked the dog this morning, and the hardly profound conclusion to which I came is that all I can do is accept that which I cannot change, help others when and where I can, be as gentle with myself as possible and endure my own suffering with all the courage and patience I can muster.  Oh, and pray until my knees are sore, of course.  Again, hardly profound.  But comforting in its own way.
          This world is far too big and broken for my skill set.  Just like when I broke my arm so many years ago.  The doctor set it and then prescribed in no uncertain terms, “These bones need to be very, very still, so bedrest with your elbow higher than your heart and your hand higher than your elbow.”  For ten days I lay propped in my bed by a mountain of pillows, watching cooking shows and sleeping.  Healing this world’s brokenness will be as spiritual as mine was corporal.  It will begin with a stillness in the human heart that allows the detritus of our hate and fear of one another to be carried off and replaced by the mercy, justice and humility that enable us to live and let others live ~ together in peace.  A stillness that makes space for the deep loneliness inside of some people to be comforted with kindness instead of tranquilized with addiction that inevitably leads to shame.*
          How such a transformation of the heart might happen for humanity, I have no idea.  But as a gathered community of faith, it seems well within our reach, should we choose to pursue it.  I do not believe we were born to suffer, friends, but rather that we were born to find the joy that is possible in a suffering world, through the Christ who came and died and rose, freeing us from the hate and fear which has besieged this world from the time humanity first walked upon it.  We must want it.  We must seek it, this joy I mean.  I pray we will want and seek it together in this time and place.  

~ peace & prayers, 
pastor annette

* From a recent op-ed about Matthew Perry’s description of how loneliness was at the core of his own addiction. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/04/opinion/addiction-loneliness-matthew-perry.html