vitalwholeness

In one of the seminar classes I teach at the University of Missouri, we are reading The Plague by Albert Camus. This book periodically makes the rounds, just as actual plagues and pandemics make the rounds. As of late it has been extremely popular and for obvious reasons. A theological and philosophical debate is embedded in the narratives of the main characters, and nothing is out of bounds: The cause of suffering, the disputed divine role in such things, and the role of courage and agency in the face of pure absurdity. All the things that cause existentialists to salivate.

I would like to say that most people are beyond blaming a deity for the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but that is not entirely true. Though Camus and most of those who have read him eventually move beyond that thinking, it is not true of all people, not by a longshot. Some people and especially some religions communities still operate with a reward-punishment system. Extended essays like the Book of Job withstanding, they remain captive to this idea, an idea roundly discounted by Jesus who knew that rainstorms pour on the heads of all people, irrespective of virtue or vice.

There was a day when people struggled over these ideas. Rabbi Harold Kushner made the rounds with his Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People? on the heels of his own personal tragedy. Through the years, I have listened to scores of people trying to untie that Gordian Knot. It most often remained tied, snugly, resisting all efforts to unweave it.

Such a dialogue usually isn’t taking place in American culture today. Mostly, I think, because people have discarded the God of classical theism. Therefore, they have no theological conundrum to unravel. Instead, as a great reverse negative, they often default to nihilism. That’s a hard place to be. Especially when bad things really do happen to good people, and they do.

But you don’t have to choose between classical theism or nihilism. There are more ways forward than those two. But what?

Just this week I heard sad news of a tragedy which befell good people in a church I know far from where I live. It shattered the family and everyone around them. Today, another tragedy, equally terrible, befell good folk in the church I presently attend. They sat there today, stunned. At the same time, a man from our community decided this world was simply too painful to stay in it one more day, and so he left. We won’t even mention slaughters in Israel, doomsday in Gaza, and devastation in Ukraine.

As a young person, my mother died around Thanksgiving. She was a fine person, too. But that, as I have already said, is beside the point. The point is that loss comes regardless and is no respecter of persons. It strikes without warning, and we very often are left without answers that make any sense. For example, I’m driving a dear one to more testing and treatment tomorrow. We know when and why her immune system was tattered those many years ago, but we don’t know what the future holds. Never the future.

In the end, we are left with faith, hope, and love. These three. Even when we wonder if they can possibly be enough, we also know, deep down, that they must be.

The season we have just entered – winter holiday and the great American capitalistic orgy – do not help us traverse the beauty and terror of life. That requires more. And it is often found in the quiet cracks and crevices of life, sacred islands where hope and courage are available.

I’m not above foxhole religion; I, too, will beg for mercy when only mercy will do. But this is more than a ritual of the last resort. On the most basic level it comes down to knowing what’s worth living for and what’s not. Getting quiet. Following ancient wisdom when it speaks. Listening to whispers of the heart. And standing in a circle with those who long for the same.