I have to admit that, whenever I read the scripture passages about 'consider the lilies of the field,' I wish with all my heart that I could believe God provides for our temporal needs. (For the benefit of someone just dropping in to this blog, I am not speaking of lavish spending, but of basic needs.) Unfortunately, I worked with the homeless for seven years - saw the homeless huddling together trying to not die of cold near the office where I worked - and knew, all too well, that this was in the 'prosperous west.' I am too aware of poverty (disease, war, etc.), not to mention the horrors humans can inflict on one another, to have that sort of trust.
Yet Jesus (who 'had no place to rest his head,' and was undoubtedly dependent on others for his subsistence when he was an itinerant preacher... I wonder how much his family complained about his abandoning carpentry) certainly was spot on with his question of to what it avails us to be anxious. I'm a case study in anxiety, so I am hardly suggesting that I have an answer for this one. Still, it amazes me (since I deal with fear every day of my life) that I often encounter people who, rather than wishing diversion from anxiety (as I do), seem to relish discussing not only how bad things are but how much worse they could be.
In recent weeks, I have been at what one would think were celebrations of happy occasions - a christening party, a feast at a church with many Italian immigrants. They were the sort of settings where I can picture the wise Jesus of Nazareth changing water into wine. My spiritual director keeps trying to get through my thick skull that much of what is most valuable in our relationship with God is trust and gratitude - and the occasions I mentioned were just the sorts where one would think gratitude and joy would be prevalent.
Instead, the conversations (which were among people at celebrations, not military leaders...) tended towards the dangers of germ and chemical warfare; it is a matter of 'when, not if' Iraq, Osama or whomever wipes out the west; that social services are going bankrupt.... and so forth, and so on. Some days, there is not enough gin in the entire world...
Why can we not enjoy the joy that might be on hand today?
Admittedly, I might be too earnest and scholarly (as my father used to say, 'book learning, but not the ways of the world') to see that some of this talk is... well, just talk. It is possible, I suppose, that people bring up such topics because it makes them look well informed. (I noticed that my nephew - the one very learned in current affairs, whom I mentioned in a previous post - had the good sense not to participate in this conversation.) Perhaps not everyone who is talking about such things as germ warfare is thinking about it later in the day.
Years ago, when I first studied the Holocaust, which took place in the decade preceding that in which I was born, I was stricken with such horror that it took me years not to awaken in fear of ending up in a concentration camp. My horror is no less today, but I think it best not to contemplate the transportation when it is highly unlikely to ever happen. Still, I remember a wise comment from the Diary of Anne Frank. She was hardly more than a child, and Lord knows, with Bergen Belsen ahead, this poor girl soon would know hell on earth. She mentioned, in one part of her diary, 'how does it make anything better today to think about how much worse it could be?!' Her family already was in constant danger. The outcome would be a horror. Yet making the best of the time in their 'secret annexe,' and hoping for safety in the future, was far wiser than adding the terror of the future.
I wish I myself could attain this degree of separation from anxiety, so please do not think my comments to be smug. I've dealt with a great deal, throughout my life but particularly in recent years, and I sometimes awaken with nightmares of some of what happened, terrified of being in the situation again. I saw the horrid suffering of my mother's final illness, and shiver at facing the same myself. (I probably don't think much of having the atomic bomb dropped on me, only because, to my way of thinking, it would be nothing to fear since I would be dead. I sometimes forget that, for many people, the worst thing that could happen would be death. Not me - I think the worst hells are right on this earth.) I'll not mention any more of my personal experience here, but I dealt with fears for good reasons. Nonetheless, there were worse things that indeed could have happened that did not.
Deep down, I wonder, do people feel so guilty that others have it worse than they do that they cannot give thanks for today?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment