It’s Friday, I’m at my desk trying to finish tasks that linger from the week. I need to write a sermon and I’m hungry. Plus, Hunter, our administrative assistant, needs an essay for the church newsletter. I’m not gripe-y, just struggling to focus.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s been a very good week. Woodside’s worship team continues to do stellar work and enjoy each other; the Care Team met to ensure we’re tending to all our folks in appropriate ways; the finance committee and board met to ponder our life together (both the practical and the prophetic); bible study made us all laugh a lot last night; and yesterday on the courthouse lawn — in our hour devoted to racial justice — Karen, Carla and I talked about the ways we’re observing or redefining Christmas traditions in our families; and I managed to purchase a few gifts. A bunch of us Woodside folks gathered on Zoom to record The Longest Night worship, which will air next week, the 17th. Plus, I got a note from a new person from the US western Plains who has found us and is thankful for the work and love of Woodside. Those are all things to get jazzed by.
And yet I struggle to focus.
Because there is still a pandemic.
It seems so long ago that I naively wondered if we might be back in our building for worship together by Easter. Ha! Now, we aren’t sure that even Easter 2021 will tell a different story. Jobs and illnesses and family strains have created cracks in our well-being; and our political life, which we hoped would get better after an election, actually seems to have gotten worse, though we didn’t think that was possible. Our mental state is fragile, our communities are missing the high-touch relating that we may not have known we needed, relationships are struggling from distance or closeness that seems to have shifted our perspective. And I heard from a colleague that a family member needs surgery and his church may not survive.
We are all struggling, and my news feed is filled with questions or suggestions for coping.
So, among all the therapy and self-care ideas that are getting passed around, one seemed to strike a chord with me. The question, from my dear friend Khalilah, the social worker and community organizer, was this: How do we train therapists to work with people are depressed/upset/unnerved because of conditions of the world as opposed to their personal experiences?
Perhaps most of us are ill-at-ease from a combination, but her question reminds us that we are often personally diagnosed for social dysfunction. One organizer responded: “I believe that it is those who are not depressed/upset/unnerved who are the ones that are ill, misaligned, in need of treatment…”
Which is quite possibly true and along the lines of the old bumper sticker “if you aren’t outraged (or in our case depressed) you aren’t paying attention.”
And in the plethora of responses and ideas, this idea, from another organizer: “Healing (comes) through struggle and organizing against the society that made you sick.”
Now, we could say that organizers think organizing is the answer to everything, but they aren’t wrong. I think of Elijah in the cave, fighting depression and hiding from death threats. The story in Kings tell us that God passed in front of the cave in various forces, trying to get Elijah’s attention — a story from which we generally only remember or value the “still small voice.” You aren’t the only one, said God. You aren’t alone. Elijah wasn’t moved or convinced.
What came next, though, was surprising. Not a spa day or a sabbatical. Instead, God sent Elijah on a new mission with a new assignment.
And that is how he discovered for himself that he wasn’t alone. Hard as it was to drag himself out of the cave (harder in a pandemic, I’ll suggest), it was in reconnecting that he re-energized.
I’m not saying the answer to depression is go do something. Depression can be a physical as well as emotional state, and we do folks a disservice if we don’t honor that.
But maybe the answer to pandemic-fueled depression, exacerbated by economic hardship, by so many black people dead in the streets and by government that promises nothing in relief, and in my case manifest in an inability to focus — maybe the answer is to take up (metaphorical, alternative) arms against the system that is killing us.
I have felt powerless a lot lately. Maybe you have too. As hard as it is to write sermons each week with even a modicum of hope, sermon-writing has also been my salvation — a chance to think, to connect, to organize my thoughts (if not my people) for the work of resistance and on behalf of a whole hurting world.
Completely out of season, I’m remembering the post-Easter story of the disciples hiding in a locked room after Jesus had been killed. They were paralyzed by his absence and their inability to imagine how to go forward. The story says he appeared among them and breathed on them — “receive the Holy Spirit,” he said. It’s not about magical appearances, but about bearing together the Spirit of something else.
We are community, gathered around the vision of something else. When the world has done its worst and we are feeling completely drained of power or imagination, we gather.
Advent is about remembering the vision; Christmas is about celebrating the birth of resistance.
We can do both of those better together. Please always know that you have people. And if I can be people for you, please call on me.