Friday, January 15, 2021
Ted Ballard
Resilience
Resilience – noun: the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.
I suppose anyone who chooses to live in New Hampshire, in January, should be unsurprised that a good measure of resilience is called for. In fact, for many of us it's a point of pride: Look at our hardy, resourceful, self-reliant response to the cold and the dark and the ice (in unspoken contrast to those faint-hearted folk in gentler climes to our south)! We are ready, we say; we are resilient, we confidently say; we are tough.
Given the invitation to reflect on resilience and on this moment, and how they do or should or could connect, I have tried first just to sit with those questions and see how they might speak to me. And as I reflect, safe in my Covid bubble – several thoughts come to mind:
First of course, that this moment is not only New Hampshire in January: It is month eleven of a pandemic of unprecedented risk, upheaval and loss, with how many months or years still to be faced? And on top of that, our nation is beset by rage and insurrection, our lawful, peaceful union teetering on the edge. So, this moment and those to come could be very tough, tougher than I was prepared for or even thought possible, tougher perhaps than I am. Maybe the passages we hear from the Book of Job are much nearer than ever we imagined.
At the same time, this far along, I see that I do in fact occupy something we call a 'Covid bubble', and that my bubble is secure and has protected me, and other like bubbles are protecting those whom I love. But then I look around myself: It is inescapable that for so many others, there is no bubble of security to protect them or those whom they love. This moment is hardest and cruelest for those who have the least – the least security, the least reserves, the least community to rely on. It is also inescapable that their suffering is wholly undeserved, and my safety likewise undeserved.
From the relative safety of my own bubble, I have the opportunity to take stock: Is it secure, and is it sustainable, and for long enough to get through to the far side? Yes, yes, and yes, for me it is. So then, is it tolerable? In truth, only barely, selfish though it seems to admit that. The hardest part is the separation, the enforced distance from others, coming up to a year now, and how long yet to come. Among the most treasured resources I rely on are regular Zoom calls with my children and grandchildren. As great a respite as those are, I am seized each time by the intense desire to burst through the screen and be able to hug the warm, alive human bodies on the other end. That is the loss I feel most keenly, safe in my bubble.
Considering these various thoughts together, where does resilience come in? Are the individual virtues of resilience – adaptability, preparedness, toughness and so on – sufficient to account for the safe place where I find myself? Plainly that notion is folly. Those virtues are surely helpful. But I did not create this bubble, it just happened; and I did not deserve this bubble, it just happened around me.
The psychologists who work with resiliency point to a range of other resources that contribute to resiliency, many of which involve ways and degrees of connection and community, apart from the attributes of the individual. When those can be strengthened and enlarged, both the individual and the community are more resilient. I pause at this – doesn't this echo strongly a message we hear so often at St John's, that the work of the church is community?
Last March, when our own clergy first brought before us at St John's the need to change our practices, practices around communion, around exchanging the peace, around even attending weekly services, this was the first institution in my life to call for sharp changes in response to the emerging Covid crisis. And then for all assembled services to be discontinued, a further response in order to protect the community. I cannot imagine Rob or Anne or Nathan had any clear idea then how much change this would be, or for how long, or what the consequences might be. But I am profoundly grateful that they had the insight and the courage to take those first steps and to call all of us to join together on a new path.
And now, these many months later, the national crisis at the Capitol emerged last Wednesday. Before the day's end, Rob had shared a link to the short video from Presiding Bishop Curry. I turned to that, not knowing quite what I was seeking, but anxious for help, for clarity, for wisdom.
Just as in the Spring, I cannot imagine the handbook for Presiding Bishops has any chapter on what to say when the nation is teetering on the edge. Therefore, how striking what Bishop Curry did say: After a few words directly on the events that had occurred, he said “Let us pray.” And then in the old familiar lines from Morning Prayer it unfolded that he meant - Let us, all of us, pray together in this moment. He did not have an answer, much less a solution; what he gave was an invitation, to join with him and each other through time and distance, and share in a practice of faith that we all know and know together.