We had our youngest two granddaughters with us for most of the last week or so. They each have a little stuffy. A Bun Bun. A bunny!. Neither of them will go very far without their little buddies. I don’t remember what special anything I needed when I was little, but I’m guessing there was something. And now there are other things we probably need to steady us. All of us do.
I spoke in a church in MacGregor earlier this month. They hadn’t assigned me a topic nor a text and so, for some reason, I ended up with ‘our moments of chaos’. To prepare, I sent a note to half a dozen people asking if anything comes to mind on that topic, and all of them responded … substantially. About Creation coming out of chaos. (Genesis 1:1). About St Paul speaking and then writing, almost always, into some kind of chaos wherever he travelled, always opening and closing with a wish for peace among them. He was a bit obsessive about order, maybe. Another wrote about Jesus being the antithesis of Paul in that he often created chaos. He accompanied people. He healed them. But he didn’t fix their difficult lives. One person suggested chaos being necessary for new life and creativity to emerge. Another reminded me of the book of Judges, where, several times, the writer mentions, almost in passing but repeatedly, that in those days, ‘Israel had no king and everyone did what was right in their own eyes’ … like a lot of our current public discourse … where social media and social polarization entitles us to ‘do what is right in our own eyes’ and to be liberally loud about it too. The last person to respond sent a note about the importance of story to any kind of stability. Our story is often what can act as an anchor when things become shaky around us. To be sure, in some cases, the story creates havoc just in the remembering of it, but often the story, whether personal or inside a collective is important to the health of the soul.
My reason for choosing the topic, by the way, had to do with several things. First, our world seems wobbly. It feels off. Maybe it’s my older age with some kind of dark pessimism settling in? But post pandemic, we seem less sure of things. Interest rates keep inching upwards. Canada, a beacon of stability, we have thought, now has a serious labor shortage, especially acute in public health services. The gap between the very rich and all the others is widening. Operating rooms keep being shut down because well, there is no one there to do the work. Nationally, we have a serious housing shortage, with mortgage and rental rates so high people cannot pay their bills, and it’s not getting resolved despite the promises of government to ‘always have our backs’. Governments in our ‘democratic’ world seem hell bent mostly on winning public battles for sound bites. Actually having mature discussions seems seriously unusual in most government chambers, and the media looks less for a helpful story or news item than it does for whatever half story or half truth can attract an audience. Far away, a war in Ukraine devastates a country, thousands are killed, and for no reason except the insane ego of one man? This summer, all of Canada seems to be burning. Smoke haze has become normal like masks and distancing were two summers ago and the environmentalists, who may be completely right, make sure we don’t forget that this is all about the alarming rate of climate change. And that’s the short list.
So really, are we doomed to spinning ourselves into some kind of inevitable incoherence, a 21st century Tower of Babel experience? We entitled westerners kind of think that can’t happen. Not to us. To others, in other places …
So … in my little talk I wondered about what stabilizes us humans these days? Here in our entitled West, but also anywhere else. Traditions have often helped. Even dress codes, table grace, bedtime prayers … routines that seem incidental and optional, but after a while, they create a sense that things are as they should be. It’s the routine we sometimes need, and never mind that when we obsess over these things and turn them into ‘God expects this of us’ rules, they become less healthy and can become little monsters in our lives. But mostly, tradition and routines keep us from wandering too far away. Institutions are like that. They can remind us of stability. They serve as pillars. A seminary, a University or small town high school are all stabilizing influences in a community. Church buildings and Mosques and Pagodas …
Some stability is internal. Proverbs calls it wisdom. And the secret to wisdom (Proverbs 2:3,4) is to be looking for it. The young man who thinks he has wisdom and stops searching for it, really doesn’t have it. Proverbs talks repeatedly about an internal wisdom that needs to be ‘searched for as for hidden treasure’.
The Catholic church knows about stability. The Mass is basically what it has been for centuries, except that now we have it in our own languages. In South America, you will rarely find a town, even a small town, that doesn’t have a Catholic church at the corner of the main plaza. It’s both a physical and a psychological pillar. Not just for the faithful who attend, but for the broader community. It’s always there. Has been for a very long time, an image of stability and of the divine among us. It’s also an image of a story, and, whatever you think of the Catholic church and it’s own history, that stability influences a broader stability in economics, politics and well, pretty much all things social and religious.
Low german Mennonites are not that different. They know about chaos. They migrate. I don’t know another people so good at picking up and moving, either as individual families or … as large groups taking enormous risks to start up again, somewhere else, usually far away from the benefits that come with being near the infrastructures of other society. Their story and their traditions define them as a people who see themselves as a separated community hoping to be left alone to live out their faith. Their beliefs, their strong commitment to family, to work, church, the gesangbüch … all are important stabilizing influences.
The Hebrews knew about stability. Maybe a bit like the Low German Mennonites. They have a history of being uprooted, starting over, and a 2023 Jewish person will recall their Exodos story as if it was his or her own. We were enslaved in Egypt and we were delivered. That was us, and in so remembering, the sense of it being their story is probably the most stabilizing influence on the way they live with each other … maybe also, why they don’t trust any other.
After my little talk in MacGregor, I remembered one thing I had meant to add. The chaos Donald Trump throws around may be an exception to this ( I’m not sure kindness as any effect on him), but really, kindness makes all the difference in many situations. Jesus lived it and spoke it. The fruits of the Spirit are all about kindness. It’s really that one thing, in the midst of any tornado in our kitchens or on our highways or at any work situation: … ‘try a little kindness’ makes most situations less intense; when it’s offered, those caught up in the moment may actually be able to step back and give themselves some needed space.
Messy Notes 