Our economy is stuttering, if not already at full stop in places, with millions of people out of work. People are using food pantries for the first time in their lives, losing apartments, losing homes or cars because they can no longer pay for them.
The pandemic has pointed out the huge economic disparities in the country, as blacks and Hispanics suffer from COVID 19 and die in far greater numbers than whites because they work in service jobs or in factories without PPE and in unsafe close proximity to each other and then take illness home to intergenerational families. There are incredible racial tensions, with protests and riots happening across the country as African Americans ask whites to value their lives in this country as much as white lives are valued.
Overarching all of this is a tremendous fear, anxiety, even depression that is afflicting all of us because - when will this end? When will life return to normal? When will disorder end? When will order be restored?
All of us need and crave law and order in our lives. Order, predictability, continuity, sameness, shared values - all of these are necessary for our lives to grow and blossom and be fulfilling. For many of us, this includes a Church family, beloved Scripture passages, for Catholics, the Sacraments, and also, for all of us, stable, happy relationships. There are Church Laws to be honored and observed, and Americans have national Laws and a Constitution to respect and obey.
In fact, we do NOT like change. We do not like anyone or anything to cause disorder, in our lives, in our Churches, or in our country. In a way, we like to believe that our Established Tradition, our established Way of Doing Things is our own Garden of Eden. We like living in a primary innocence or naiveté.
Yes, you read that right. Many of us are naive, not knowing or understanding when Something is Wrong and Needs to be Changed in our perfect Law and Order world. We often, as individuals or groups, dislike, rebuke, or actively battle against those people who rise up, speak up, and want to challenge and change Laws or our normal ways of doing things. In other words, it takes struggle to challenge and change our Established Traditions.
In the 1800's, "agitators" started protesting and speaking out that slavery was morally wrong. The people of eleven U.S. states started and fought America's bloodiest war, the Civil War (1861 - 1865), to prevent change, to preserve the statue quo, to hold on to the Established Tradition of slavery because slaves were the stable backbone of and perceived as necessary for the South's economy. I say "Established Tradition" because people had been kidnapped from Africa and brought as indentured servants and slaves to the colonies for two hundred years, since the 1600's. To this day, there are people who will naively say that not all slavery was bad, that not all slaves were mistreated. As if we could ever morally condone owning another human being!
Today, American women take the right to vote for granted, but changing people's minds, changing the Established Tradition of male-only voting, happened only recently. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution which granted women the right to vote wasn't passed by Congress until June 4, 1919, and wasn't ratified until August 18, 1920, just one hundred years ago. And the struggle took blood, sweat, and tears.
"Beginning in the 1800s, women organized, petitioned, and picketed to win the right to vote, but it took them decades to accomplish their purpose. Between 1878, when the amendment was first introduced in Congress, and August 18, 1920, when it was ratified, champions of voting rights for women worked tirelessly, but strategies for achieving their goal varied. Some pursued a strategy of passing suffrage acts in each state—nine western states adopted woman suffrage legislation by 1912. Others challenged male-only voting laws in the courts. Militant suffragists used tactics such as parades, silent vigils, and hunger strikes. Often supporters met fierce resistance. Opponents heckled, jailed, and sometimes physically abused them." (Wikipedia)
Strangely enough, one of the biggest groups which opposed changing the Established Tradition of the Constitution and so opposed women's right to vote were - women. The National Association Opposed to Women Suffrage (NAOWS) was founded in the United States by women opposed to the suffrage movement in 1911. Many were wealthy women who did not want to see an upset of the status quo - Established Tradition - and their publicity "spin" was that most women did not want to vote and preferred being protected and represented by men.
Agitators in our Churches have also been unpopular. No one was happy when men and women began coming forward to authorities to reveal (with great courage) that they had been physically, emotionally, and/or sexually abused by priests and women religious. The clerical hierarchy closed ranks for many years, and enforced a climate of secrecy and oppression, to protect the Established Tradition. The battle to reform Church procedures on reporting abuse to improve transparency and accountability is still going on, as laity demand input into the system. Some Catholics, remaining innocent and/or naive, have not wanted to believe that such terrible things could happen in their Church. Some have left because they cannot psychically or spiritually handle this injustice and destruction of their ideals.
Fr. Richard Rohr believes that all of us need established Law and Order to begin our personal lives, to keep us safe, to allow us to grow and blossom. But, he says, at some point, some types of change and disorder will always enter our lives - in our country, our Church, our personal life. For Christians, this is the Crucifixion that is necessary before we have a Resurrection. This is the shake-up to our own Established Tradition that is the only way that we will be pushed to grow into new and mature life. He says,
"To continue growing, we must go through a period—or even many periods—of Disorder. The pattern of transformation involves at least some measure of suffering. Part of us has to die if we are ever to grow larger (John 12:24). If we’re not willing to let go of our smaller selves, our norms, beliefs, and preferences, we won’t be able to enter the more expansive and inclusive space of Reorder.
"The invitation from Jesus to move from one stage to another seems quite clear in his frequent invitation to metanoia: to turn around or change our minds. I remember having problems with that myself. I thought, 'Why should I turn around? I’m baptized, confirmed, have shared the Eucharist, and am even ordained! I’m right!' How foolish and yet how typical of someone in love with Order. That’s precisely the stubbornness Jesus is talking about.
"Almost inevitably, our ideally ordered universe—our 'private salvation project' as Thomas Merton called it—will eventually disappoint us, at least if we are honest. At some point in our lives, we will be deeply disappointed by what we were originally taught, by where our choices have led us, or by the seemingly random tragedies that take place in all our lives. There will be a death, a disease, a disruption to our normal way of thinking or being in the world. It is necessary if any real growth is to occur." (Richard Rohr's Meditations, August 16.)
He continues,
"Sooner or later, if we are on any classic “spiritual schedule,” some event, person, death, idea, or relationship will enter our lives that we simply cannot deal with using our present skill set, our acquired knowledge, or our strong willpower. It will probably have to do with one of what I call the Big Six: love, death, suffering, sexuality, infinity, and God. Spiritually speaking, we will be led to the edge of our own private resources. At that point we will stumble over a necessary stumbling stone, as Isaiah calls it (8:14). We will and must “lose” at something. This is the only way that Life–Fate–God–Grace–Mystery can get us to change, let go of our egocentric preoccupations, and go on the further and larger journey.
"There is no practical or compelling reason to leave one’s present comfort zone in life. If it’s working for us, why would we? Nor can we force ourselves into the second stage of disorder (though we must certainly be open to it). Any conscious attempt to engineer or plan our own enlightenment is doomed to failure because it will be ego driven. We will try to “succeed” in the midst of our failure and “order” our time in disorder! But unexpected weaknesses, failure, and humiliation force us to go where we never would otherwise. We must stumble and be brought to our knees by reality. 'God comes to you disguised as your life,' as my friend Paula D’Arcy wisely says. We must actually be out of the driver’s seat for a while, or we will never learn how to give up control to the Real Guide. It is the necessary pattern.
"There must be, and if we are honest, there always will be at least one situation in our lives that we cannot fix, control, explain, change, or even understand. Normally a job, a fortune, or a reputation has to be lost, a house has to be flooded, an illness has to be endured. Some kind of falling, what I call “necessary suffering,” is programmed into the journey. By denying our pain or avoiding our necessary falling, many of us have kept ourselves from our own spiritual depths. We still want some kind of order and reason, instead of suffering life’s inherent disorder and tragedy." (Richard Rohr's Meditations, August 17.)
This pandemic that we are enduring as individuals, as a country, as a world, right now, is a profound disorder, a terrible suffering, a tragedy on so many fronts. It is compelling all of us to leave our "comfort zones," our own lives' Established Traditions for normalcy. We are stumbling and being brought to our knees by reality, by weaknesses, failures, humiliations. Can we stumble into deeper faith? Can we believe that, at this point in our individual lives, and in the life of our country and our world, that this is the only way that Life - Fate -God - Grace - Mystery - can get us to change? To let go of our egocentric preoccupations, and go on our further, larger, longer spiritual journeys?
How much of our innocence, our naiveté, has been necessarily lost? Have we learned that it is naive to think that most people in this country have economic or medical security? That it is naive to think that this is truly the Land of Equal Opportunity when many do not have a fair wage and suffer disproportionately from a raging virus? That it is also naive - and this is delicate - to believe and trust that all police officers are mature and fair-minded? That it is naive to trust that the powerful Blue Brotherhood will always be honest, when they also sometimes close ranks and hide injustices as the Brotherhood of Priests have so often done when they wield power?
Our salvation as individuals, as countries, as a world, is that God is always with us. God, as Paula D'Arcy says, is coming to us disguised - hidden - as our life. God desires that the tragedies and disorder in our private worlds and our larger world should shatter all our preconceived ideas and Established Traditions so that we can be mended and made new by the Holy Spirit. We as individuals can grow through this. Our country can grow through this as much as it grew through the battles of the Civil War, the battles for Women's Suffrage, through the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's. Our Church can grow through the closing of Churches during the pandemic to come to a much more profound understanding of what Church - community - really is.
We can all re-discover that the profundity of love requires listening and self-sacrifice.
Once this meant you listened to the tears of a slave and saw the bloody welts on his back, and then you experienced Jesus' metanoia, the changing of your mind. Once this meant that you listened to the tears of a woman who had always been quiet until she finally had to personally face the Truth that her country did not treat her as an equal human being, and then you experienced Jesus' metanoia, the changing of your mind.
Now this means you listen to medical experts who teach you that we cannot conquer a virus until we all love and self-sacrifice for others by wearing a mask, by social distancing, by following the rules about safely opening schools and businesses; and then you experience Jesus' metanoia, the changing of your mind.
Love means the freedom to say "no" to self-interest and ego and "yes" to enduring inconveniences to save others' lives. To sometimes say "no" to Established Tradition, the normal way of doing things.
Each one of us, each country, grows depressed, stumbles and falls. But, each one of us is a precious, infinitely loved, beloved child of God. And our country, like all countries, is infinitely loved by God. God is with each of us as we journey through disorder to individual new, brighter, more mature and loving Re-Order and New Life, from crucifixion to resurrection. As Pope Francis says so beautifully,
TUESDAY AUGUST 18, 2020
“In dark moments, in sad moments He is well aware that our faith is weak –all of us are people of little faith, all of us, myself included, everyone – and that if our faith is weak our journey can be troubled, hindered by adverse forces. But He is the Risen One! Let’s not forget this: He is the Lord who passed through death in order to lead us to safety. Even before we begin to seek Him, He is present beside us lifting us back up after our falls, He helps us grow in faith. Maybe in the dark, we cry out: “Lord, Lord!” thinking He is far away. And He says, “I am here.” Ah, He was with me! That is the Lord.”