On a lark, the other day, listless and distracted, I return
to Ron Rolheiser’s website, just to see what the priest and retreat master has
written lately. I used to
anticipate and devour his weekly columns. As I read about Christmas and the Incarnation, and
Rolheiser’s message sinks in, I am
able to name the malaise that has infiltrated me during the last eighteen
months, and sometimes even threatened paralysis. Pain.
Pain, when absence of a common vision defaults to the status quo;
Pain, as media twist headlines so that a story about a funeralhome charging a family $100 carbon tax (instead of $1.00) for cremation becomes
a story about carbon tax instead of a story about the funeral home’s error or deception,
whichever is the case;
Pain, as a Prime Minister with the common touch and a
progressive agenda I support takes a holiday without first checking the details
with the Ethics Commissioner, and in so doing jeopardizes the good he can do
because he appears elitist and hypocritical;
Pain, when I see fake news, logical fallacies, insults, and
derision used to advance an ideology;
Pain, as the bullying strategy of a pathological liar who
took the scab off the underbelly of humanity was rewarded, and he took the oath
of office as President of the United States;
Pain, as protesters whose frustration I understand resort to
violence in their outrage.
Even at Christmas, and, indeed in the essence of the
Christmas story, Rolheiser says, "pain lingers." Lucky for me, he not only helped
name my malaise; he had a suggestion for managing it. I must "burrow deep into the heart of planet earth and
find it shimmering with divinity." In order words, I have to grab onto my joy with both hands and fight for
it. My children’s passion, my
grandsons’ laughter, my husband’s caring,
all give me life. It’s easy
to find joy there. No effort
required.
To honor Rolheiser’s words, though, I need to see divinity
around me every day. I have to
admit, when I look around, that’s maybe not as difficult as I’m making it out
to be. I witness a parish raise twenty thousand dollars in
five months to sponsor a refugee family and furnish a home. I watch members
of our Refugee Sponsorship Committee put their lives on hold to orient them in
their first year among us. Our
neighbours clear the snow on our triple driveway while we’re away.
Sunrise dazzles each day
and warms my heart. Friends grace
our table.
I can also take a lesson from President Obama, who stayed
grounded through eight stressful years in office by reading ten letters each
day from Americans. The 10 LADs,
as his staffed called them, reminded him of the reason for his work. They also enabled him to salvage his
joy. He says,
“I tell you, one of the things I’m proud of about having been in this
office is that I don’t feel like I’ve ... lost myself . . . I feel as if — even
if my skin is thicker from, you know, public criticism and I’m wiser about the
workings of government, I haven’t become ... cynical, and I haven’t become
callused. And I would like to think that these letters have something to do
with that.” (Jeanne Marie Laskasjan, New
York Times, January 17, 2017)
These role models are important, because hanging on to joy
is just one half of the equation.
The other, as Jennifer Welsh says in The
Return of History: Conflict, Migration and Geopolitics in the Twenty-First
Century, is action. Each of us
has a responsibility to go beyond understanding the forces at work in our
society. We must work to build the
free and generous society we value.
"If we want a deeper transformation," she says,
we have to initiate it ourselves.
We can learn from the movers and shakers, the celebrated or the
unacknowledged, of the twentieth
century: Individuals stepping up
to draw attention to injustice, to demand greater equality of participation,
and to stand up for fairness. And
they did so knowing that their demands would likely involve some personal
sacrifice. (p. 295)
So pain is inescapable.
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