Marilu Thomas, “Keep Watch, O Lord”
Nadia Boltz Weber, the tattooed ex-stand-up comedian turned Lutheran pastor, has a blog that I frequent because she allows folks to ask questions and share opinions in free form. Someone started listing all the ways she was fatigued—and before I knew it, I was adding to her list. Compassion fatigue, self-compassion fatigue, school fatigue, social media fatigue, work fatigue, streaming fatigue, anger fatigue, feeding the dog fatigue, wanting to care fatigue, fatigue of fatigue. I noticed that ice cream, chocolate or wine were not on the list. I had ‘vacuuming fatigue’ in this list but realized you can’t be fatigued of something you stopped doing.
What is it that we are collectively feeling?
Are we fatigued like tired and exhausted-- or fatigued like a bridge whose metal is weak from repeated stress? It feels like a kind of homesickness for a place we used to live, boringly normal but missed like an old dear friend. We’re ‘just not feeling it,’ whatever ‘it’ is. Unknowable, unnamable, unbidden, and untamable. This feeling is lurking under the surface of every waking and sleeping moment. We know in our souls that the world is out of our control, and we have no real means to set it right.
People in the congregation have told me, “Things aren’t that bad, they just aren’t good. I want more than what I’m living right now but I feel ungrateful thinking that. There is a lot of pressure to feel content with what I have. A lot of pressure to be grateful for the present moment, which makes me feel guilty because I can’t drum up the gratitude right now.”
In our bible study this Fall, we are studying Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren’s book Prayer in the Night. She writes about how we all feel small and mortal and very, very vulnerable saying, “We can speak of vulnerability as something we choose to reveal about ourselves…But this isn’t the kind of vulnerability I mean. Instead, I mean the unchosen vulnerability that we all carry, whether we admit it or not. The term vulnerable comes from a Latin word meaning “to wound.” We are wound-able. We can be hurt and destroyed, in body, mind and soul. All of us, every last man, woman and child, bear this kind of vulnerability till our dying day.”
This week the number of Americans who have died from Covid-19 passed the number who died in the 1918 Pandemic. We are all suffering and when there is suffering, the question of God’s goodness comes up. It is called a Theodicy—questioning how a benevolent, all knowing, omnipotent God could allow suffering Why this evil? Why this heartbreak? Where are you God? Harrison- Warren calls it, “The wrestling match between the reality of our own vulnerability and the hope for a God that can be trusted.”
The Polish Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska, who has been called the Mozart of poetry, famously penned, “I prefer not to ask how much longer and when. I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility that existence has its own reason for being.” Timothy Keller tells us, “Just because we don’t see a reason for evil and suffering, doesn’t mean there’s not a reason for it.” Neither of these authors, who have suffered their own tragedies is telling us to not burden others with our pain or to be happy Christians ignore the darkness. They are, however, testifying to the existence of both suffering and mystery.
As Christians, we believe in the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ. Robert Capon reminded us that, “Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to teach the teachable. He did not come to improve the improvable. He did not come to reform the reformable. None of those things works.” We have come to one of those places where we have lost the energy to try to understand, where we are dead with fatigue, where we have used up Plan A-Z. Our deadness is necessary to our belief that only God can raise us and make us live again.
The reading in the book of James today declares, “Are any among you suffering? They should pray.” Yes- we should pray if we can pray. I grew up Catholic with many memorized prayers like the blessing for dinner and we prayed the rosary on long car trips, but they didn’t mean much to me then. I found the ritual to be stifling and boring. Besides the occasional bargain prayer-- “If you help me God, I’ll do anything!”, I didn’t have much of a prayer life. When I joined a church in my late 20s, I was very intimidated when people would pray out loud because they seemed to be praying to impress or manipulate people, instead of talking to God. When my husband and I separated, and I was thrown into panicked single motherhood for three years. I reverted to the prayers I could say by heart because I just didn’t have the energy to make up prayers. The ritual repetition of saying a prayer became comforting. I found out that ritual is at the heart of spirituality. When we come into the sanctuary for worship and hear the prayers and scriptures read, our heart rate goes down, we calm and settle into the familiar rhythm and words. We are part of something bigger than ourselves and our bodies and souls reaffirm this.
Rev. Harrison Warren reminds us that we are the recipients of the gifts of prayer through tradition. “I needed words to contain my sadness and fear. I needed comfort, but I needed the sort of comfort that doesn’t pretend that things are shiny or safe or right in the world. I needed a comfort that looked unflinchingly at loss and death…When we pray the prayers we’ve been given by the church—the prayers of the psalmist and the saints, the Lord’s Prayer, the Daily Office—we pray beyond what we can know, believe, or drum up in ourselves.” These are the words we whisper in the dark when a child is sick. In the hospital sitting vigil with a loved one. When we are alone and afraid. They are the words that stand sentinel on the bridge of compassion to carry us through. These ancient words carry the grace and love of Christ like water to a parched soul.
Many of our prayers are in the plural, holding us up when we individually might not believe. For instance, we are studying the Apostles Creed in Adult Ed this Fall, to better understand what we are communally affirming. In the Anglican Communion, we have prayers in the Book of Common Prayer so that you need never be without the power of prayer in your hour of need and fatigue.
When we go on mission trips, we usually end the day with Compline (pg. 127 of BCP)s because we spend the day absorbing the sorrow and suffering of others. It is a beautiful expression of our trust in the power of Christ over our living and dying. Listen to the words and find yourself and your loved ones in this expression of love and care-
Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; land all for your love’s sake. Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace. Amen.
