But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

In the past few months, I’ve held conversations with two young adults who both admitted that they didn’t really feel as though they could bring a child into this world. Both were principled, compassionate, educated, and talented individuals. Clearly, both had genes worth passing on, and both were committed to making this world a better place. And yet when they considered the current state of the world, they couldn’t bring themselves to think about their own children navigating such a world.

Their despair and fear shouldn’t surprise me. But I found myself thinking about my 20-30-something-self and asking: Did I ever consider the world to be such a cruel and hopeless place that I wouldn’t bring a child into it? The world of my young adulthood was marked with painful images from the Viet Nam War, as well as the anti-war protesting and rioting that followed. Suffering, death, and injustice bled through our black-and-white console television sets and into our living rooms nightly: Viet Nam demonstrations in Washington, D. C.; clashes between police and protestors at the 1968 Democratic National Convention (the Chicago Seven); 1970 Kent State shootings; France nightclub fire leaving 142 teenagers dead; damages finally awarded to Thalidomide victims, just to name some of the most awful. Because most of us only had access to newspapers and three major television networks, news traveled more slowly, and our world seemed relatively smaller and less global then. But not less cruel, not less unjust, not less ugly.

I watched every Viet Nam feature film and television series that came out. To the extent that I could, I tried to imagine myself in the jungle, in a field hospital, in an airport returning home to those who loved me and those who hated me, on the streets of my hometown, jobless, damaged, and despised by many. If I empathized enough, if I vicariously took on the pain and despair, I rationalized that somehow in my young midwestern life, I was standing with and for all those who suffered. That’s what I tried to tell myself as I closed my eyes and images of Viet Cong ambushes exploded like schrapnel into my consciousness. Bring it on, I told myself. This is the least I can do.

Through it all, however, I don’t remember ever thinking that I couldn’t–or wouldn’t–bring a child into this world. Not once. Perhaps I should have, perhaps this would have been a more logical response to the world’s despair, but I didn’t. Even as I tried to vicariously shoulder the pain I saw around me, I lugged around a hope chest, unwilling to turn my back on the world I imagined for my children.

So, as I heard these this young adults speak of the probability of childless futures, and as I grieve the senseless killings of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, the injustice and racism, hatred and fear, destruction of property and lives, I find that I have no words in the face of this despair. That is, I have words, but I fear they’re not even close to being the right words, words with such fine and perfect edges that they cut wisely and lovingly into our collective conscience.

In Matthew 11:35, we read: Jesus wept. Perhaps if I were to say or write anything now, I might simply echo Matthew’s words: I weep.

I weep because if I were to write or speak, I’m truly afraid that my words may be more damaging than healing to someone(s). For herein lies the challenge: How do you wisely and lovingly hold the pain and despair of disparate individuals or groups in your soul? How do you empathize with one without hurting or betraying the other? I’m certain that there are many who may argue that you simply can’t and shouldn’t, that you must choose sides. They argue that your failure to choose is cowardice, at best, and hatred, at worst. Choose and let not your heart be troubled. Weep only for the righteous–or at least the more righteous.

But oh, the choosing! I weep for Ahmaud’s and George’s families, for victims of racism and oppression, for a system that all too often continues to be powered by white privilege. I weep for nonviolent protestors who long to have their voices heard. I weep for owners whose businesses and livelihoods have been damaged or destroyed. I weep for police officers, the good ones, those ethical men and women who continually put their lives on the line. I weep for city and state officials who yearn to listen to and care for individuals in their communities, as well as to reach peaceful outcomes. I weep for all those who have been victims of stereotyping and oppression, all who have been too easily and willingly associated with the worst of their group or race. I weep for all.

No doubt, some will accuse me of being insensitive and perhaps too much of a Pollyanna when I admit that I take solace in the words of one who is much wiser than me, Mahatma Gandhi:

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.

Gandhi’s words in no way diminish the terrible impact of tyrants and murderers on the world. Nor do they diminish our moral duty to end these tyrants’ and murderers’ reigns and to bring them to justice. Gandhi’s own life was clearly a testament to his unwavering commitment to end oppression, as well as to stand with and care for the oppressed. Still, when he says, Think of it–always, there is power and truth in his words. It would be great if truth and love won all of the time, or at least won much more quickly and decisively. And it would be great if the inevitable assurance of victory would heal our gaping, festering wounds. But it doesn’t. It may be, however, as novelist George Eliot writes, the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

I confess that likening despair to unfed hope–a hope we eagerly, passionately yearn for– is comforting. And encouraging. How, then, might we feed our hope in the midst of so much ugliness? German Romantic writer, John Paul writes:

The words that a father speaks to his children in the privacy of home are not heard by the world, but, as in whispering galleries, they are clearly heard at the end, and by posterity.

There are so many ways to feed our hope. Although the words of truth and love we speak to our children, our students, our friends and family in homes, classrooms, and workplaces may not immediately be heard by the world, in the end, they will be heard. So, our words matter greatly. Our persistance and conviction in delivering them matter greatly. Our unwavering belief that, in the end, truth and love will triumph matters greatly.

Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich believes that [w]hen a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something. Our current despair, like that of former generations, may be just this: evidence of our belief in something. We cry, we rage, we pray, we march because we believe that the world can be a better place for everyone.

And this is what I told my son, a 27-year-old black man who fears bringing a son or daughter into this world. We despair because we genuinely care, because we believe something better is possible. A world in which a child can flourish. A nobler world in which integrity and virtue take the throne. A humbler world that learns from past mistakes. A softer world that loves and listens better.

How I want this world for my son, for his son, for all sons. How I want them all to live without fear of judgment, oppression, and hatred. How I want the gene pool to explode with super novas, stars bright enough to light even the darkest corners of the earth. And how I want to feed the hope that continues to sustain and save us, to fix my eyes on the truth and love that triumph in the end–always.

House of Common Prayer

Near the edge of the timber
where a ravine cuts a deep swath in the clay,
a stand of yellow clover rises,
one bright chapel in the brome.
 
This is a house of common prayer,
my matins,
where I lay my woodsorrel at the altar
and weave my voiceless psalms
among the birdsong.
 
This is a place of rest,
safe from thistle and teasel;
a place of hand-folding, green-knuckled 
and small;
a place where the length of oxtongue is lament,
and the depth of dandelion
is praise.
 
I have been here before
as a child who traveled alleys
and once found—keeping vigil behind the corner grocery store —
a hallelujah of hollyhocks.
 
Even at eight, I knew this was a place of prayer,
that there behind the garbage cans were crimson blossoms
preparing a way in the wilderness.

Keeping to the prescribed course is a matter of genius and magic. Brown must guide them by any means possible. He has a sextant clipped to the dashboard in front of him. The course and distance calculator is clasped to the side of the fuselage. The drift indicator is fitted in under the seat, along with a spirit level to measure bank, and the Baker navigation machine sits on the floor of the cockpit. There are three compasses, each of which will illuminate in the dark. Sun, moon, cloud, stars. If all else fails, he will have dead reckoning. –from TransAtlantic by Colum McCann

On June 14, 1919, Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown began what would become the first non-stop transatlantic flight–and transatlantic airmail–from Lester’s Field, near St. Johns, Newfoundland to Clifden in Ireland. They were flying a modified WWI bomber, the Vickers Vimy, with 1,890 nautical miles of open sea and 16 hours of flying time before them. In the aftermath of WWI, however, there were few who even knew about the flight, and the pilots’ ultimate achievement only became newsworthy after the fact. The fact that this flight occurred only 16 years after the Wright brothers made the first controlled flight of a powered aircraft is nothing short of miraculous.

Irish novelist Colum McCann profiles these men and their harrowing flight in a section of his 2013 novel, TransAtlantic. Actually, to call the flight harrowing doesn’t begin to do justice to the seemingly insurmountable odds these men faced. As parts of the Vimy began to ice up, at one point, Brown left the cockpit and actually climbed onto the wings to dislodge ice. Between the heavy snow and clouds, failing instruments, and loss of any sight of moon or star or horizon line, the men were literally forced to fly blind for hours. During these tenuous hours, Brown, the navigator, resigns himself to relying upon dead reckoning.

Dead reckoning is a navigational process of calculating position by relying upon a previously determined position, or fix, and then advancing that position based upon speeds–known or estimated–over time and course. In today’s world of unwavering and complete reliance upon technology for navigation, dead reckoning seems primitive, unnecessarily foolish, and certainly deadly. And yet, when all else fails, keeping to a prescribed course may be–as McCann writes–a matter of genius and magic.

As the weeks of coronavirus updates and death tolls persist, many may feel as though we are, indeed, flying blind with no clear horizon line in our sights. People use the word unprecedented with genuine reverence. There seems to be no real fix from which we can confidently navigate. And so, for better or for worse, we are delivered into the hands of dead reckoning.

Just the other day, I realized that I didn’t know what day it was–not just the date, but the actual day of the week. For weeks, one day has rolled into the next, and only the rising sun and emerging moon has provided any real semblance of time passing. Like many, I fear losing myself in the heavy cloud cover of no-end-in-sight. I don’t fly blind very well. Dead reckoning is not in my current bag of tricks. I need a lodestar, a fixed point from which to navigate my days.

These days of nowhere to go and not much to do have given me uncomfortable pause. For I’ve realized that for much of my life, the lodestars from which I’ve navigated have been work-related. A good day’s work–either at school or at home–kept me on an even course flying confidently towards the future. A sense of accomplishment was the steady updraft that pushed me ever onward and upward. A stack of graded essays, a lesson planned, two loads of laundry washed and folded, the back door finally painted, the dishwasher loaded–all notches on my belt of achievement, all navigational points along the road of my life.

American author Henry Wadsworth Longfellow writes of a dead reckoning that is an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies. Truthfully, I know that too much of my life has been a frenzied pursuit of fixing my place in the world without any true observation of the heavenly bodies. When I should have looked upward, I ran inward. When I should have relied upon God, I relied upon genius and magic. And when I should have turned to faith, I turned to dead reckoning, resigned to the belief that all else had failed. If I simply worked harder, longer, better, I could fix my place in the universe.

For a time, Alcock and Brown had no other option but to trust in dead reckoning. But both men understood that they desperately needed a real fix–the sun, moon, horizon line–if they were to survive. There are periods and circumstances in our lives during which many of us have trusted dead reckoning. For whatever reasons, we have believed that–frightening as it may be–this was our only real option. As we work to develop a coronavirus vaccine and seek the safest ways to reopen our country, a certain amount of dead reckoning is understandable. When it comes to the science of both combatting the virus and recovering the economy, we are flying a little bit blind.

But when it comes to our spiritual response to the pandemic, we don’t have to resort to dead reckoning. Our lodestar, our fixed horizon line has been–and always will be–right there in front of us. We may not remember what day of the week it is, but we can remember who is flying our plane.

https://youtu.be/UJODr3XTj_E

photo by Collyn Ware

Apple Blossom Time
    --for Gracyn

For months, winter has cast
stern silhouettes upon the land--
such spears and snarls,
twigs and tines
to make the hours weep.
 
Until spring simply opens the world, releasing
baskets of balloons which take the air
with saffron joy.
Until the first sweet blossoms pink the day,
blushing against the cornflower sky.
 
Tomorrow, you will turn eleven.
But for months, you’ve been pruning
the branches of childhood,
making space for something even brighter
in the canopy above.
 
Now, the first blooms begin to peek around
the corners of innocence.
They test the breeze,
their petals pearl with dew.
 
This is apple blossom time,
this liminal space where girlhood smiles
one last rosy smile, and minutes blink
in wonder.
 
This is apple blossom time,
when the world is pinker, softer
 
and you, my darling bud, are lovelier
than you know.
 
 
 
 
 

In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong.
― Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs

As most of us face additional weeks of quarantine, we may feel as though we do, indeed, understand our fellows of the cell. Celled in, sheltered-in-place, cloistered–call it whatever you wish. In the 13th century, St. Francis of Assisi, walked the roads of Italy and joyously proclaimed that [the] whole world is our cloister! Today, the world’s cloister is more of a collective reclusiveness and remoteness.

To cloister means to seclude or shut up in or as if in a convent or monastery. In the photo above, the 11th century Monastery of the Holy Trinity in Greece, one of 24 Meteora monasteries, is a stunning example of a cloister. In Greek, meteora means suspended in the air. This type of suspension–above the earth, cut off from others–is precisely what many of us think of when we consider cloistering. We think of a dramatic retreat from normalcy, a sparsely furnished windowless cell and endless hours of solitude. The Monastery of the Holy Trinity looks like just the place for this kind of retreat. And as remote as it is, it may not seem all that different than the homes we now find ourselves sheltered in.

In his book, The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, Henri Nouwen writes:

We say to each other that we need some solitude in our lives. What we really are thinking of, however, is a time and place for ourselves in which we are not bothered by other people, can think our own thoughts, express our own complaints, and do our own thing, whatever it may be. For us, solitude means privacy . . . We also think of solitude as a staion where we can recharge our batteries, or as the corner of the boxing ring where our wounds are oiled, our muscles messaged, and our courage restored by fitting slogans. In short, we think of solitude as a place where we gather new strength to continue the ongoing competition in life.

As Nouwen suggests, I suspect that many of us regarded our first days of quarantine as welcome–even necessary–recharging. To be cloistered in our homes meant privacy and valued time for ourselves. I remember the first weeks of a summer job I held in college. I cleaned rooms in a small motel and, in the beginning, revelled in the time I had alone in each room. A bottle of Lime Away in hand, I scrubbed and thought, scoured and dreamed. I recall thinking, they’re actually paying me for this? A few weeks into the job, however, I began to dread being alone with my thoughts, for they had run amuk into darker, scarier places, and I couldn’t rein them in. They charged into what ifs that often left me standing on a precipice looking into the worst of my fears. I began to hate being cloistered in those rooms. With each bath tub I scrubbed, I felt as though I was scrubbing away layers of myself, leaving little of worth behind.

Nouwen writes about his own struggles with what he calls transforming solitude, the solitude of the saints. He explains how this type of solitude requires getting rid of scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract me–naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, deprived, broken–nothing. He goes on to explain that it is this nothingness that is so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something. Ah yes, I have known–and continue to know–this nothingness.

Our current cloistering doesn’t prohibit us from talking or video-chatting with friends and family, from listening to music, watching television, reading books, and doing whatever we like to do in our homes. Nor does it relieve many from attending meetings (thanks to Zoom). Still, we’re not used to living exclusively at home. And in spite of technology and other means of distraction, we may find ourselves staring into the nothingness that arrives when all else fails to engage us.

Indian writer Amit Kalantri writes that [s]ocial distancing is an opportunity to check if you can tolerate your own company. There are certainly days–like those in my motel-cleaning summer–when I genuinely can’t tolerate my own company. I’d prefer others’ company. I’d prefer to listen to thoughts that are not my own, to immerse myself in the blessed presence of anyone else but me. And yet, I understand that the true nature and value of cloistering is not found in distraction but in contemplation.

In his book, Contemplative Prayer, Thomas Merton writes:

In reality the monk abandons the world only in order to listen more intently to the deepest and most neglected voices that proceed from its inner depth.

We’re not monks, and we certainly haven’t abandoned the world. Still, we have an unprecedented opportunity to listen more intently to those deepest and most neglected voices. That is, we have this time to temporarily abandon the busy, noisy lives we’ve led. We have this time to probe the inner depths of all our lives could–and should–be.

In the past few weeks, I’ve read some amusing posts and seen some funny memes about everyday sweatpants vs. good sweatpants. Today, dressing up might certainly mean breaking out the good sweatpants or leggings. In The Cloister Walk, author Kathleen Norris writes about her time in a monastery:

I could suddenly grasp that not ever having to think about what to wear was freedom, that a drastic stripping down to essentials in one’s dress might also be a drastic enrichment of one’s ability to focus on more important things.

I think Norris is right: when we strip down to essentials in what we wear, we may also be more likely to strip down to essentials in what truly matters–and what does not. For the foreseeable future, we will be fellows of the cell. As we move about our cells with the glorious freedom that only elastic waistbands can afford, may we cloister well.

If I care to listen, I hear a loud whisper from the gospel that I did not get what I deserved. I deserved punishment and got forgiveness. I deserved wrath and got love. I deserved debtor’s prison and got instead a clean credit history. I deserved stern lectures and crawl-on-your-knees repentance; I got a banquet—Babette’s feast—spread for me.
― Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace?

I confess that for much of my life, I didn’t fully understand that there was a banquet, an inconceivable and unprecedented feast, spread before me. I was too busy bellying up to the drive-up windows of what-I-deserved. A little condemnation (extra shame please), a side of paralyzing self-doubt (hold the compassion), and a whole lotta guilt (super-sized). Quite frankly, I didn’t get grace. What was I to make of such a beguiling offer of love and forgiveness? How was I to accept a gift I didn’t deserve? Truly, I deserved crawl-on-your-knees repentance; unmerited favor was surely intended for others.

Recently, I watched the feature film, Just Mercy, which tells the story of Bryan Stevenson, the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Stevenson, a public interest lawyer, has dedicated his life and career to helping all those who need and deserve grace: the poor, the imprisoned, and the condemned on death row. The movie–based on Stevenson’s book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption–focuses primarily on one of Stevenson’s first clients, Walter McMillian, a young black man awaiting death for the murder of a young white woman. McMillan didn’t kill this woman, and there was no evidence to prove that he had, except for the sole testimony of a white felon desperate to get himself a better legal deal. Faced with the seemingly insurmountable odds of challenging a southern justice system that had summarily condemned McMillan and countless other black men, Stevenson perseveres through legal battle after legal battle. Ultimately, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals exonerated McMillan, reversing the lower court decisions and freeing him after six years on death row.

Stevenson writes:

We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy and we condemn ourselves as much as we victimize others. The closer we get to mass incarceration and extreme levels of punishment, the more I believe it’s necessary to recognize that we all need mercy, we all need justice, and—perhaps—we all need some measure of unmerited grace.

Just Mercy specifically addresses serious flaws in our justice, prison, and social systems. Still, I believe that Stevenson’s admonishment that we all need some measure of unmerited grace is relevant and fitting for everyone. We may neither deserve nor understand it, but most of us yearn for a banquet of love and forgiveness, acceptance and affirmation. We’ve tired of fast food that arrives cold and tasteless. We desperately want something better.

As we celebrate Easter, the feast is before us–year after year. The table of unmerited grace is set, our places reserved. Often, however, we join the ranks of so many throughout history who have struggled with this reality. We’re wage-earners who like to pay our own way. We’re self-made men and women who don’t like to be beholden to anyone. We’re hard workers who want to deserve the gifts we receive. For too many Easters, I didn’t accept my invitation to the banquet. When unmerited grace was offered, I passed, thinking that I’d done so out of humility and a keen sense of justice. How could I stuff my face with forgiveness I didn’t deserve? How could I accept an entrée of love? How could I possibly take even one hors d’oeurve of compassion?

I’m guessing that many of Bryan Stevenson’s clients felt similarly. Faced with years of imprisonment and/or execution, they, too, may have felt as though the banquet invitations they’d received were surely meant for other, more deserving folk. But the strange and glorious news of Easter is simply this: no one deserves a place at the banquet table, and yet all are invited. It is the wonderfully irrational promise of Easter that gives us clean credit histories.

In his book, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, Philip Yancey writes:

How would my life change if I truly believed the Bible’s astounding words about God’s love for me, if I looked in the mirror and saw what God sees?

Yancey understands the potential power of unmerited grace, how it may truly transform those who accept it and come to see themselves as God does. As we sit down to eat our own Easter banquets, I pray that we might see ourselves as the undeserving but much-loved children of God. And above all, that we might graciously accept the standing invitation to the greatest banquet of all.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. Ephesians 2:8

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
― Winston S. Churchill

Have you ever heard of the Lancastria, a British ocean liner whose sinking resulted in the greatest losses in British maritime history? I’m guessing that most haven’t. I hadn’t until recently as I was reading Erik Larson’s biography of Winston Churchill and family, The Splendid and the Vile.

On June 17, 1940, the RMS Lancastria, requisitioned during Operation Ariel to evacuate British nationals and soldiers two weeks after the Dunkirk evacuation, sank. Bombed by the Germans near the French port of Saint-Nazaire, the Lancastria’s sinking resulted in the British military’s largest loss of life from a single conflict in World War II. More people died from the Lancastria sinking than from the Titanic and Lusitania combined. No one knows exactly how many people died, but death estimates range between 3,500 and 6,500. Some have speculated that the the death toll was even greater. The Lancastria’s occupancy was generally limited to 2,200 with an additional 375 crew members, but 9,000 were crammed on board during Operation Ariel. There were approximately 2,500 survivors.

And yet for five weeks, the British press–under Winston Churchill’s orders of a media blackout–offered no news of this disaster. Only when the late edition of The Scotman published a story featuring claims from the New York Sun newspaper regarding the Lancastria’s sinking did the British government admit that the ship had, indeed, sunk after being bombed by the Germans. In his memoirs, Churchill wrote that he told his staff: The newspapers have got quite enough disaster for today at least. He later admitted that he’d planned to release the news of Lancastria’s sinking a few days later, but that this was Britain’s darkest hour, and the news of France’s surrender crowded upon us so black and so quickly that I forgot to lift the ban.

Churchill’s Minister of Information, Mr. Alfred Duff Cooper, was asked why the Lancastria’s sinking, as well as stories of heroism from British troops on board, were not published in England until weeks after this had been published in the American press. He said:

The reasons for holding the news of the bombing and sinking of the steamship “Lancastria” were the following. This ship was engaged on a military operation, and it was evident from the German wireless announcement that the enemy were totally unaware of the identity of the ship which had been sunk. Further, it is contrary to the general policy of His Majesty’s Government to announce the loss of individual merchant ships. The number and the total tonnage of merchant ships lost is given in a weekly statement. The tonnage of the steamship “Lancastria” was included in the statement issued on 2nd July. This policy is well known, and I cannot, therefore, understand why on this occasion bewilderment should have been caused in Liverpool and shipping circles.

The Lancastria was considered a merchant ship?The total tonnage was reported weekly? In this case, the ship carried people–not merchandise–and the total tonnage was largely made up of human lives. And Cooper couldn’t understand the bewilderment regarding this loss? He undoubtedly did understand the tragic proportions of the Lancastria’s sinking, but as a good soldier whose commander in chief had ordered him to silence–and later to damage control–he spun the story as only those in such positions can. And do.

Mark Hirst, grandson of Walter Hirst, a Lancastria survivor, writes:

The trouble with the story of the Lancastria is it doesn’t fit with the grand narrative of that period – the miraculous evacuation of Dunkirk, and the Battle of Britain.

Like so many stories which have been hidden in the cavernous recesses of history, the Lancastria’s story was largely overlooked and forgotten. And there have been many of those who have commissioned the hiding, who–in the words of Churchill–believed that It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required. Indeed, history is peopled with so many whose justifications have been birthed from and taken refuge in what is required.

I’m not writing to pass judgment but rather to question. In war time–or any crisis–is the truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies? Do we require a bodyguard of lies to protect us from truths so brutal, so colossal that most of us would instantly collapse and be buried under their weight? Do most individuals in power insist, as Colonel Jessup did in the movie A Few Good Men: You can’t handle the truth!?

I’ve written recently about the challenges in identifying the truth. There are just as many challenges, I suspect, in determining if–and when–the whole truth is warranted. Always? Sometimes? Rarely? Just as our worldview determines our definition of truth, it also determines how and when we use it. Did Churchill truly believe that the British people should be protected–at least temporarily–from yet another crushing blow in their darkest hour? Was his decision to hide this from the press more an act of compassion than deceit? Did he fully intend to make this news public but found himself so overwhelmed by the fall of France and its implications for Britain that he simply forgot to lift the media blackout? I’m guessing that the answer to all of these questions is yes.

And yet, the hiding, covering, or spinning of the truth rubs us wrong. Even when we know and trust others, believing their motives to be good, we falter when we discover they’ve lied or concealed something from us. Our trust in them begins to erode, if only through pin pricks in their armor. We feel betrayed, at first, and later frightened. A question grows and gnaws at us: what else don’t we know?

Today, as we shelter in place and watch/listen to/read the emerging news about Covid19, most of us have become weary–and wary. News reports and social media posts circle around us as sharks eyeing chum in the water. And as chum, many of us find ourselves bobbing helplessly in threatening waters, eager to be washed up on some sunnier, safer shore. But the reports, the data, the images keep coming. Government officials, medical and public health experts, scientists and all those with mouthpieces keep talking. Day after quarantined day, we wonder if we’re being told the whole truth or if it’s being spun, modified, or withheld by those, like Churchill and so many others, who may contend that in our darkest hours, the truth may undo us.

Churchill once quipped that [a] lie gets halfway around the world before truth has a chance to get its pants on. Maybe this is our fear: that truth won’t have a fighting chance to get its pants on before lies have changed our lives and written our history. And the reality that those who lie to us may genuinely care for us only confuses and saddens us.

One of my greatest blessings is that I live 50 yards from my grandchildren. We’ve spent many wonderful hours on the swings that hang from the big oak tree in their yard. And even–perhaps especially–in this time of quarantine, there’s nothing like taking to the air in a swing where you can momentarily leave the earth and all its troubles below you.

Swinging
for Griffin

These are feet I know well.
Ten button toes stuffed,
too often, into unnecessary shoes.
 
They’ve walked the path from
your house to mine so many times
that even the creeping charlie has given up
and left a red clay artery to harden
in the sun.
 
Shoeless today, they take to the air,
dangling dreamily from the swing in the big oak,
their bottoms coated with dirt
even before noon.
 
Again, you say.
And I push again with all that I have
because I remember how the swing’s chains would squeak--
then catch--
when I’d gone as high as I could;
when, with each pass,
I took to the sky as a swallow;
when my hair would find the breeze
and I’d close my eyes because it was better this way,
the rising and falling taking my gut
by surprise.
 
I push hard, running beneath you,
hoping to tease the air into taking you further
into the oak boughs,
 
hoping to catch your feet so that I can release you
again.

 
 
 
 

But as horrific as the disease [Spanish flu] itself was, public officials and the media helped create that terror—not only by exaggerating the disease but by minimizing it, by trying to reassure. A specialty among public relations consultants has evolved in recent decades called “risk communication.” I don’t care much for the term. For if there is a single dominant lesson from 1918, it’s that governments need to tell the truth in a crisis. Risk communication implies managing the truth. You don’t manage the truth. You tell the truth.
― John Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History 

American author and historian John Barry has written books on the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, and the development of the modern form of the concepts of separation of church and state, as well as individual liberty. Today, perhaps more than ever, he’s been interviewed by many news organizations and journals as a historical authority on flu pandemics. Having recently read his book, The Great Influenza, I was struck with the dominant theme of his work: tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We shouldn’t distort, pervert, or manage it, Barry argues, for this only creates fear and distrust. It did in 1918, and it will again today and tomorrow.

President Woodrow Wilson was convicted that the country must prepare for and support the war. To this end, Barry writes that Wilson created the Committee for Public Information. This agency’s work was to control all information the American public received. Just one year earlier, Wilson had pushed the Sedition Act through Congress, which made it a crime to say or publish anything that would negatively influence America’s war efforts. Barry cites the architect of the Committee for Public Information who stated:

Truth and falsehood are arbitrary terms. The force of an idea lies in its inspirational value. It matters very little if it is true or false.

The truth–or manipulation of the truth–lies at the heart of Barry’s convictions, as well as Wilson’s and those government officials who’d been designated as information czars wholly in charge of everything that American citizens should know and believe. And at this time when a flu pandemic was sweeping the nation, when many described bodies being piled up as cords of wood, when the country’s best scientists were feverishly working to identify the cause of and develop a potential treatment for this influenza, when military bases were decimated with death, when some towns, like Gunnison, Colorado, set up armed perimeters around their counties to keep the contagion out, and when death was a likely visitor to most families–at this time, the Committee for Public Information was pumping out pro-war advertisements and news articles, encouraging citizens to buy war bonds, employing a host of Four Minute Men to make rousing patriotic speeches in city gatherings and movie theaters, and prosecuting those who dared do or say anything “unpatriotic” .

On the subject of the flu pandemic, they were either silent or responded with patronizing assurance that this was just the ordinary grippe and citizens should take normal precautions: wash your hands, don’t spit in public, keep your feet warm, stay rested. They chose not to report the truth of the pandemic’s strength and its cataclysmic consequences. Perhaps they weren’t nearly as inspired by this truth as other truths that they believed were necessary to sustaining our war efforts. Or perhaps they believed this truth was one that they could conveniently shelve as WWI raged on in Europe. Regardless of their reasons, the truth about the pandemic was either downplayed or not reported at all.

Until the truth could no longer be denied. This grim reaper kept knocking and knocking through horrific stories of pain and death the likes of which most had never experienced. Real people with real stories–and photographs of the unimaginable consequences of pandemic. By then, tragically, the influenza had not only taken the country but the world. When Spanish King Alfonso XIII was stricken, the Spanish press covered the pandemic which was now ravaging Europe. Ironically, a virus which hadn’t originated in Spain earned the name Spanish flu only because the uncensored Spanish press were the first to write about it openly.

As I read through Barry’s book, I kept thinking about his central message to tell the truth. But the more I read, the more I was plagued with these questions: What is the truth? How do we know it’s the truth? Why does one individual’s truth differ from another’s? For years, I taught a high school unit on worldviews. I wanted my students to investigate the concept of worldview, to understand how worldviews differ, and ultimately, to determine their own worldview based on what they’d learned. As we began our unit, we used James W. Sire’s definition of worldview from his book The Universe Next Door:

a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic make-up of the world.

We studied the “big questions” whose answers help determine one’s worldview: What is real? What is good? What is right? What is true? What does it mean to be human? What happens to humans at death? How do we know anything? What is the meaning of human history?

Our discussions regarding truth were often the most interesting and contentious. In short, we disagreed about what constitutes truth. Countless students offered statements like this: Well, you have your truth, and I have mine. Others countered with arguments like this: Something is either true or it’s not. There can’t be one truth for you and one truth for me. At the heart of these debates was the issue of whether or not truth was relative or absolute, whether or not truth could/should be determined individually and by circumstance OR whether it should be universal and immutable, for everyone for all time. It goes without saying that we never reached consensus on this issue. We did, however, identify major differences in how we defined and used the concept of truth.

Just yesterday, my daughter and I were discussing recent news reports on the Covid19 pandemic and asking these same types of questions: How do we determine the truth about this disease and its implications for us–as a world, a nation, a state, a community? What data, what evidence is true? What interpretations of this data/evidence are true? Who is speaking the truth? Why does one source’s truth appear to differ radically from another’s?

Unlike the government’s deliberate suppression of information regarding the Spanish flu pandemic, our government officials–as well as medical, scientific, economic, and public health experts–are providing us with ongoing information, an ocean of information that relentlessly crashes against the shores of our consciousness. We have a lot of information at our finger tips, at the touch of a button, the flip of a switch. And I think it’s safe to say that this information is filtered through each source’s worldview. That is, we all see the world and our place in it from the lens of our particular worldviews. Because these worldviews differ–some subtly and some drastically–we should expect that arriving at the truth will be challenging, at best. We should expect that we’ll have to read, listen, and view widely and from a variety of sources. We should expect that we will have to critically weigh all that we learn if we are to determine what we think best defines the truth.

Some may argue that, in an ideal world, we would all share the same worldview; hence, we would all define and arrive at truth in the same way. But we don’t. And we won’t. This is, perhaps, the truest thing I can write today. We can bash those whose worldviews (and truths) differ from ours, or we can learn from them. We can ignore sources that we’ve generally deemed untrustworthy, or we can regard them with cautious skepticism, entertaining the possibility that they may provide us with kernels of truth. We can quickly fix labels of good guys and bad guys, or we can withhold judgment until–and unless–a preponderance of evidence justifies such labeling. In the end, the pursuit of truth will be, as it has always been, a laborious and ongoing individual endeavor.

Certainly, Barry’s admonition about telling the truth is one that we shouldn’t take lightly–not during a pandemic or ever. Who and what determines the truth, however, will continue to challenge us. As it should, for these questions will always be the crucial questions. And the answers to these questions will continue to shape our lives and our world, as they have decidedly shaped the past.

I shall look at the world through tears. Perhaps I shall see things that dry-eyed I could not see.
― Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son

A few days ago, I read through the book of Lamentations. How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary! [Lamentations 1:1] It seemed a fitting book, for the sky was gray with cloud cover so opaque that the sun had little chance of breaking through. Much of the world was widowed, sheltering in their homes, confined within four walls previously regarded as sanctuaries. Leaden with regular news reports of the pandemic sweeping across the world, the days stretch on, and our hearts and souls are heavier than hearts and souls should be.

Or perhaps not. In his book Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, Father Richard Rohr writes:

In much of urban and Western civilization today, with no proper tragic sense of life, we try to believe that it is all upward and onward–and by ourselves. It works for so few, and it cannot serve us well in the long run–because it is not true.

Rohr has a point here: we really don’t have a proper tragic sense of life. It is all upward and onward for most of us, most of the time. If our hearts and souls become heavy, we push on. If we feel as though we may be drown in the miry pits of our circumstances, we literally pull ourselves out by our own bootstraps. And we do it all independently, refusing to ask for or accept help. We are not a lamenting people.

At least not publicly. In private, we lament much more like the prophet Jeremiah who cried out:

My eyes fail from weeping, I am in torment within; my heart is poured out on the ground because my people are destroyed, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city. [Lamentations 2:11]

In private, we are tormented by loss, by fear, by doubt and insecurity. In private, we often pour out our hearts, and our eyes fail from weeping. In private, we can sometimes be first class lamenters.

Perhaps both Richard Rohr and Nicolas Wolterstorff are right: collectively and publicly, we need a proper tragic sense of life and a teary worldview that allows us to see what dry-eyed we could not. In short, perhaps we should be a people of lamentation. Not a hand-wringing, self-pitying, complaining kind of people but a genuinely lamenting people. In his book, Movies are Prayers: How Films Voice Our Deepest Longings, Josh Larsen writes:

Christian lament is not simply complaint. Yes, it stares clear-eyed at awfulness and even wonders if God has gone…Yet at its fullest, biblical lament expresses sorrow over losing a world that was once good alongside a belief that it can be made good again. Lament isn’t giving up, it’s giving over. When we lift up our sorrow and our pain, we turn it over to the only one who can meet it: our God.

If we’re not particularly good at genuine lamenting, we’re even worse at accepting and understanding paradoxes like the one Larsen presents here: expressing sorrow over losing a world that was once good alongside a belief that it can be made good again. Today as more people die from Covid19 and quarantine measures persist, many may fear that with each passing day and each new positive test, the world that they once knew as good is being lost, bit by precious bit. To grieve and yet still believe that this world can be made good again? This is a paradox that challenges us. It’s generally either we’re going to hell in a hand basket OR don’t worry, be happy. It’s the rare public (or private) individual who can hold both of these realities in their minds and souls.

Yet, this is the foundational paradox of lamentation. And we need to both understand and practice it. We need to cry out in desperation for our world, for our communities, for our families, and for ourselves. And not just for pandemic reasons–for all sorts of loss and pain, collective and private. I take great solace in all those biblical figures who cried out to God, who laid their pain, anger, and despair at his feet in unabashed lamenation. These are the pillars of our faith, and they openly and regularly lamented.

Michael D. Guinan, a professor of Old Testament, Semitic languages and biblical spirituality at the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, California, believes that we have lost a healthy sense of lament in our personal prayer life and in our communal, liturgical life. He argues that even in the funeral rite–the only real context in which lament is generally practiced–we may short shrift it. He explains:

Some years back, after the changes in the rite of funerals, a family I knew lost a child in a boating accident. A lot of pressure was brought to bear to “celebrate the Mass of the Resurrection, to rejoice in his birth to new life.” About a year later, their suppressed grief almost tore the family apart. Again, we must not deny honest pain, nor jump too quickly from loss to acceptance and skip over the lamenting process. Christian faith does proclaim a message of hope, but death and grief are still real.

We have always lived in a world in which hope, grief, and death live as necessary neighbors. Today, our personal and pandemic worlds are no different. And this is why lamentation is not only an appropriate response to our circumstances, it is truly the only response. We can’t deny fear and pain and skip the lamenting process. Not now–not ever.

In the end, as difficult as it is, we must learn to regard lamentation as a means of both crying out in despair and as a means of proclaiming hope. Just the other day, I saw a look of real fear pass over my granddaughter’s face as her mother and I were talking about the recent pandemic reports. As an eleven-year-old, her only real fears should be whether she passes a math test or plays her flute solo without error. To see the fear of pandemic cloud her worldview–even for a moment–was heartbreaking. Still, I wish for her the same thing that I wish for myself, that I wish for the entire world: that we will be people of lamentation who support and pray for our fellow lamenters, that we will look at the world through tears and see those things that, dry-eyed, we could not see before.