Finding Our Center

Now the Silence, Now the —what?

I had no intention of trailing off into a faint echo after I wrote the last post. Asked if I planned to carry on with the blog after the election, I answered sometime back in October that indeed I had no idea of quitting it, no matter the election outcome. The reason was simple, said I. No matter who wins, the issues that the United States is fighting over are not going to be resolved on November 5, or on January 20, or any day any time soon. The stakes will change. The goal posts will be moved. But the issues will continue. The fight will go on.

The cacophony of voices all trying in some way to grab the biggest megaphone to yell out some explanatory orthodoxy answering “What Went Wrong?” is annoying. My response has been to shut down what almost anyone is saying. I’m totally uninterested in getting back into the game of “Outrage!” played by media and pundits every day of a Trump Presidency that has not even formally begun. How can anyone be outraged, or for that matter, even mildly surprised after all we’ve been through?

Am I just being cynical? Judge for yourself. I don’t feel cynical. I don’t feel a knot in my stomach. I don’t feel a headache throbbing. I feel two contrary things at once. First, I am fired up with determination fueled by both anger and love. At the same time, I am experiencing a weird kind of peace. It is a peace born in a state of hovering above the current fray: a peace that understands that the unknown is far greater than the known. As I said, I’m experiencing not just peace, but a weird kind of peace.

It must have been the first or second night of my experience at Princeton Seminary. I sat in the balcony of Miller Chapel at a worship service. Dr. John Meister, a local Presbyterian pastor known for his preaching gave the sermon on a text from the book of Esther. I’ll leave to you to read the context in which comes this verse (Esther 4:14): “Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” The topic of the sermon was “Look for the all-important moment.” Now, close to sixty years later, I’m remembering the sermon and the admonition. As far as I am concerned, this is one of those “all-important moments” for me. I am not plotting and planning anything spectacular to do. But on the pages of this blog, in some other writing, in the occasional sermons I might preach, in conversations, in letter writing, in text messages and in whatever other forms I might have access to communicate, I will speak up and speak out. I have no fantasy that my words will mean a fig to anyone in power. But knowing or even guessing the results has never been my province anyway. I will continue to do everything in my power to work, speak, and think for the Truth; for liberation of the oppressed; for the protection of the vulnerable; for justice; for peace.

So that's my determination. What about love? I've come more and more to the conclusion that Love is the primal force in the universe. I was a part of a group just recently that was kicking around the questions of what we believe and why. As you might expect, there was little unanimity. I sat through the entire conversation just thinking. I keep remembering the words of Ella Wheeler Wilcox, who was writing about the treatment of animals when she wrote, "So many gods, so many creeds, so many paths that wind and wind, when just the art of being kind is all the sad world needs." I'm not sure we only need the art of being kind, but I think it would be a good start. And I'm increasingly convinced that the practice of love begins by simply being kind—to all, to any, even to inanimate things that have no feeling. Call me a romantic, call me silly. But it comes down to feeling a sense of responsibility for what we are given to care for. That for me means being gentle, being kind. (I have a pedigree in the opposite, believe me. And a long history of failures in the Lovingkindness Department.) I'm holding on to basics in this Great Silence of not knowing. And one of the basics is in omnibus caritas: charity in all things.

Peace. That is the other piece of this for me. So far as I can tell, there is no sharp division between peace among people, peace all over the planet, and peace in the human heart. Peace is peace, and it means something far greater than the cessation of hostilities. While the Democrats argue about what went wrong, I’m concentrating on what I know to be right. I know in a deep place within my soul that there is nothing capable of stopping the Love which brought the cosmos into being with a Big Bang, the Love that continues to create and give birth to stars, galaxies, planets, and everything that is and was and will be. I know that nothing is strong enough to rip you or me or the most miniscule particle from the hand of the One who holds all, sustains all, and cares for all. I am quite certain that however bad things may be, they will not last forever. Equally certain am I that however good things may be, they will not last forever either.

In early 2020, Joe and I made a couple of trips. One was to Roseboro, North Carolina, to celebrate the 90th birthday of one my last living first cousins. The other was to Atlanta for the memorial service for my oldest nephew who had died at his own hand. When we went to Roseboro and Atlanta, we were unaware that a world-changing pandemic was lurking at the door. We had no earthly idea how many 90+ year olds would be buried during the coming onslaught. We had no clue that the gathering in Atlanta would be the last time we saw many in our family for the last time until years had gone by—and some we'd never see again. We were unaware that COVID-19 would fly like feathers from a shot bird through the world we knew, changing everything. We had, no more than you, any idea of the death toll, the suffering, the fear, the isolation, the exhaustion that everyone would experience. Among all the things we did not know but soon would was the colossal mismanagement of the Trump administration that would make the suffering, the division, the death rate, and economic pain far worse than it had to be. Like it or not, the pandemic was exactly what Donald Trump had feared: the sinking of his hopes for reelection in 2020. We did not know.

Nor do we know now what is coming down the chute in the next four days or four months or four years. But I can promise you this. Things will not go according to plan—not his plan, nor anyone else’s. I’m not saying that this is anything in which to take comfort. I’m simply saying what is true. If there’s comfort to be found, for me it’s in the fact that the things I’m giving my life for are the same things I’d be giving my life for had Kamala Harris been elected nor if Donald Trump and all his minions were to go to hell tomorrow.

My practice these days is not too different from what it has been for years now. To quote from a Robert Frost poem I learned in high school, “when at times the mob is swayed to carry praise or blame too far,” I can “take something like a star to stay my mind on and be staid.”

Something like a star for me generally comes in the form of just such things as the Frost poem,[1] of biblical texts, of hymn texts and quotations I’ve committed to memory over the years. The Book of Common Prayer is now embedded in my consciousness, its phrases forever bumping around in my mind and tripping off my tongue. Collects and psalms are my meat; prayers and phrases my daily diet. I keep going to church because there I keep hearing bells ringing that I’ve heard all my life. They sustain me. They force me to remember how small I am and how much it matters not at all, for the Holy One is a Name for the Truth and the Love that never wears out. Indeed, “God” has outlasted everything that has come and gone in creation over the billions of years of its existence.

I know not what the future hath

Of marvel or surprise,

Assured alone that life and death

[God’s] mercy underlies.

And if my heart and flesh are weak

To bear an untried pain,

The bruised reed he will not break

But strengthen and sustain.[2]

Those lines from Whittier are a frequently evoked “star.” And this:

Awake, awake to love and work,

The lark is in the sky!

The fields are wet with diamond dew

The worlds awake to cry

Their blessings on the Lord of Life

As he goes meekly by.

Now let your voice be one with theirs,

Shout with their shout of praise;

See how the giant Sun soars up

Great Lord of years and days!

So let the love of Jesus come

And set thy soul ablaze,

To give, and give, and give again

What God hath given thee,

To spend thyself nor count the cost,

To serve right gloriously

The God who gave all worlds that are

And all that are to be.[3]

This is what I’m filling the silence with when silence itself seems to be more than I can bear. I choose the voices I listen to with care. Let others do the arguing and the planning. I applaud them and I’ll be glad to sort through their prescriptions and recommendations, and sometimes answer their calls to action. Meanwhile, I need to cradle my center and nurture it. I need connections with people like you. I need to hold you and be held by you.

Find what sustains you. Seek it and you will find it.

As it is written, everyone who seeks, finds.

[1] “Take Something Like a Star,” in Selected Poems of Robert Frost, New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1963, page 269.

[2] John Greenleaf Whittier, “The Eternal Goodness,” on the internet at https://sharpgiving.com/101famouspoems/poems/original/068Whittier.html, accessed November 21, 2024.

[3] “Not here for high and holy things,” Hymn 9 in The Hymnal 1982 (New York: Church Publishing Company, 1986).