Dear People of St. James’,
We hear a lot of military metaphors casually batted around these days. We’re “fighting” a “war” against coronavirus. Medical professionals are on the “front lines.” President Trump recently referred to himself as a “wartime president.”
Over 40 years ago, Susan Sontag warned us of the dangers of using “illness as metaphor,” particularly as a military metaphor. “Nothing is more punitive than to give a disease a meaning,” Sontag wrote. War is punitive. War is existentially terrifying. War turns people against one another. War mentality is aggressive, tempting us to impulsive, destructive words and actions.
So, here’s a truth: we are not at war with coronavirus. Yes, we face a huge, existential problem in coronavirus, but Pearl Harbor has not been bombed. Facing a problem rather than an enemy means seeing our problem with clear eyes, making calm decisions. Peace, not war is what is required, and peace is no metaphor. Peace should be our full reality.
Peace enables us to solve the problems that can be solved.
Peace enables us to accept the ones we cannot solve.
Peace gives us the wisdom to tell the one from the other.
Peacemaking in the spirit of St. Francis is our way forward.
Let’s start with the middle term: “accept the ones we cannot solve.” I lose my inner peace when I stake my happiness on the world being other than what it is. I can’t do anything about the line in front of me outside the grocery store. I can’t do anything about the words and actions of our national leaders. I can’t do anything about the growing red areas on the world’s pandemic map. It does me no good to be outraged at the world, or to despair of it.
I need peace, but peace will not fall out of the sky. I need to be intentional about resisting indulgence in my anger. I need to grieve our losses rather than despair, because despair is the stuck place, while grieving takes loss seriously and seeks to move beyond it. And, I need to treat my anxiety with all the solid information I can gather. Facts are my friends—they tell me what I can actually do…
…which brings us to: “solve what can be solved.” Each of us has a unique constellation of lives we touch. Whether you’re a county judge, medical professional, reporter, neighbor, family member, anonymous grocery shopper, or even this old retired priest sitting at his computer, we all have the ability to affect the lives of those we can reach. What will we do with that influence?
Many of those whose lives we can reach are at war, militantly invested in despair or anger or delusion, marshaling their forces against perceived enemies. It would be a warlike act on my part to try to change any of them against their will by arguing, criticizing or belittling. What I can do, by making my inner peace visible, is create the possibility of lowered anxiety in my relationship with these folks. If I speak peaceably, staying close to facts, emphasizing relationship, grieving loss, I embody my openness to their world, opening the door between us with an invitation to move toward a more peaceable and powerful place.
And, finally, how do we “tell the one from the other?” In ordinary times, that’s not always obvious, but in this time of coronavirus, what we can fix and what we can’t is dramatically obvious. Don’t be misled by the things that make you feel powerless. You can make a very great difference, and God is calling you to do exactly that.
The Rev. David Hoster
