troubling times

Thanksgiving in Terrible Times

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The Apostle Paul tells us to “give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

I find myself wondering in our deeply fraught times how we do this without descending into triteness–a polyannish view of life that ignores or pretends that terrible things don’t exist.

I’m not sure I quite have this figured out but here are a few thoughts on this Thanksgiving Day of 2023.

One part is for us to remember Paul’s previous statement: pray continually. Prayer means taking the troubles we see, whether a swiftly warming planet, mass shootings, the atrocities of warfare, the propensity of our corrosive political discourse to undermine the rule of law and the structures of governance, our nation’s efforts to heal the wounds our seizure of indigenous lands and the various forms of forced subjugation of another people. Add to this our private pains and griefs. There is enough of this to keep us praying continually, for sure–perhaps crying out to God, “how long?”

But the other part of this is what I call the problem of goodness. Amid the evils of the world, goodness endures. A food pantry my church hosts fed three hundred families. I recall when seventy-five was stretch. This was overwheming, yet all were fed. Jesus still multiplies loaves and fishes, including the contributions of neighboring churches and local groceries. Evening walks overwhelmed me at times this fall with the riot of color. A myriad of dedicated caregivers, backed by medical researchers, supported by many who prayed, gave a young boy we know his life back after a rare and aggressive bone cancer. A runner, he just walked a 5K for the first time since his illness. Even the seemingly trite things of family, friends, and food are wonders–exquisitely unique human beings partaking of the fruit of the creation and of other creatures also nourished by that creation. As I write, I’m listening to vintage Simon & Garfunkel singing “Bridge Over Troubled Waters”– a song that spoke comfort and peace into another fraught time of the early 1970’s and I marvel at the good power of musical artistry.

So much goodness that endures, even in our darkest circumstances. I choose to believe that it is a harbinger of the greater goodness of God’s new creation. We pray continually. And we give thanks. It is the holding of these together that prevents thanksgiving from ever becoming trite. There is a deeper magic before the advent of evil in the creation as C.S. Lewis taught us in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. As we pray and wait, we express our faith and hope that all evils will be undone and reversed. As we give thanks, we attest that there is a Providence that evil will not defeat. Our delight in goodness is perhaps one of the most subversive things we may do against the power of evil.

As we share the goodness of our tables with others, we defy those who would give despair the last word. Every time we give thanks we proclaim that we know better.

Books During Troubling Times

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?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????What part do books play in your life during tumultuous times? Right now, we are in the midst of political convention season with harsh words both inside and outside the convention halls that are symptomatic of our national fault lines. Our news seems an endless stream of violence and hate and the angry responses of others. How do you deal with all of that? And what part do books play?

Some of us may simply decide these are not times when one should bury one’s nose in a book. We get caught up on CNN, or Fox News, or NPR, or the endless bits and bytes of information on Facebook and Twitter. Truthfully, I think most who follow this route simply ratchet themselves up to high levels of anxiety, anger, or depression.

Books offer a great escape for some of us. For a time, we can imagine ourselves in imaginary worlds, on fantastic voyages, or in idyllic settings. Maybe there are wars, but they are far off and imaginary with clearly drawn lines of good and evil–orcs versus men, Romulans versus Earth. These are worlds with heroes and villains. Or we join a clever, iconic detective like Hercule Poirot as he (or she) ferrets out the murderer, as in the Agatha Christie mystery I am reading at present.

For others, we read to understand–whether it is books on Islam, on race relations, on political processes and past presidents. We read to be able to understand how we’ve gotten to this place, to reflect on our way forward and what may be learned from the past. We want to go deeper than the news story soundbites and the ponderings of pundits. Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns opened my eyes to the huge internal migration of Blacks from the south to the northern cities of our country between 1915 and 1970, and how it has shaped race relations to this day.

Sometimes we need books that help us step out of our own situation to get perspective from another time and place. While I am disturbed by the unrest in our own country, reading Rohinton Mistry’s account, in A Fine Balance, of India during Indira Gandhi’s time as Prime Minister and the country was under a state of emergency, I gain a renewed appreciation for living in a country where there is still a commitment to the rule of law, that serves as the basis or ground for protests of injustice, where law could not be bought, sold, and enforced by strongmen. It reminds me that if we become complacent about advocating for the living out of a nation’s highest ideals, either at home or abroad, we risk losing something precious and rare in the world.

Finally, it seems to me that we sometimes respond to troubling times by going back to sacred texts as well as the great works of literature. A recent book on lament pointed me back to the biblical language of lament that allows me to give expression to grief and sadness over the paroxysm of violence we see in the world and the bitter enmities that fuel that violence. Troubling times remind us that we can’t live on mass culture pablum, that we need to keep company with those who have wrestled with the deepest questions of the human condition.

I am not going to make particular recommendations for what you ought to read. What I might suggest is that all these different types of books have a place in our reading in troubled times. Books help us confront the deep questions our troubles raise, give us perspective and spiritual resources, and help us lay aside questions that cannot be resolved in a day when it is time to do so. Read well in these times, friends.