Do the Next Right Thing | Song: Do What Must Be Done |

Friends,

I'm at the Episcopal Archives in Austin Texas researching the conflicts that arise when a school is always a bit ahead of the curve. It turns out to be fascinating work.

-Liz

How Long, O God, How Long?

We had a tornado warning last Thursday. Phones blared, and in my community that was followed by emails from people who have not lived in tornado areas before. I don't have a basement, what do I do? Can I bring my dog to the common basement? Is it really a risk here? The last tornado warning included a touchdown just a mile from my home. And then 15 minutes later it was over. New emails: Can we come out? Is there another one?

In that time the sky went from light grey to dark, the air pressure dropped enough to pop my ears, and the rain pelted the neighborhood. All there was to do was wait.

It's a new weather system in the northeast--tornados. Of course there have been Massachusetts tornados before: Worcester in 1953, Springfield in 2011. Lately it's more than one watch every year. It makes climate change feel inevitable. It makes waiting feel interminable.

Heather Cox Richardson wrote of the joy of the Nicks win in New York City, and the opening of the Obama Center in Chicago as a metaphor for the turning sense of hope in our nation right now. As I read it all I could think of is the families self-deporting in panic of being separated from each other. The families already split up. The immigrant children afraid to go to school. The loosening of regulations for the private companies making money on immigrant detention centers.

There are gleeful pictures of the reflecting pool and the peeling paint and algae as if this is a win for those that want a different government. My penny pinching heart just hurts at the wasteful spending. All of the wasteful spending: on unnecessary wars, one lawsuit after another, building detention centers for peopel who have done nothing wrong., signing a memorandum of agreement in the midst of the excesses of Versailles. The cost of elections. The paperwork created by the integration of medicare with my private for-profit supplemental insurance.

It all makes it obvious that universal health care, free school lunch, and housing don't cost too much, it's that we don't want to help people who are poor. And that fact is not new with this administration. For centuries we have not chosen to prioritize healing and helping over the gathering of wealth.

And so I ask, How long How long, O Lord? Will you forget us forever?
How long will you hide your face from us?
How long must we bear pain in our souls
and have sorrow in our hearts? (Psalm 13:1-2)

This is the eternal question. Is God ignoring us? Are humans incapable of the living out the love in our hearts?

What happens when we feel this defeated, this abandoned, this devastated? One thing we do is to hide in our rooms and make art, sing songs, write poetry. I am in favor of acknowledging the ruin around us. I am in favor of some time in introspection, some time wasted on video games, some time sitting with the Psalms. I can hear David and other writers feeling completely inconsolable.

I imagine a pause in the poetry, the long tirade of complaint, and then a pause, perhaps listening for God's response. The psalms always then turn toward hope.

But I trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord
because God has dealt bountifully with me. (Psalm 13:5-6).

It's the invitation to come out of our hiding. To notice the hopeful things that are happening. To reach out to the community to offer a basement to sit out the storm, to offer reassuring words, to offer someting as simple as a glass of water for someone who is struggling.

And also, it is in community that we find the way forward. To see the face of God is to see the person nearby, handing us a even a cold cup of water, that is where the hope is for the future.

The work is small, and the work is huge. The work is simple, and at the same time impossible. In each moment we choose the one thing we can do and try our best to let go of the rest.

Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous, and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward (Matthew 10:40-42).

What is your church doing to be honest about the difficulties, and to find the action you can do? Reply to this email to let me know what's happening. ​
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Green Greenway's song Do What Must Be Done.

Frozen II has a very basic message: When there is no way forward, you do the next right thing. You can't see a way out, and that can lead to despair. Instead of getting stuck in that despair, you do the next right thing. You give a friend a cold cup of water.

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