I find it impossible this morning to write the kind of post I usually write. Everything I have to say about faith seems impossibly trivial to me in the context of our wounded world. I want to do something — something that will help with the healing.

The first thing I do every morning when I fire up my computer is take a look at The Washington Post. This has been a daily ritual since 9/11. It’s my way of establishing that the world beyond my always peaceful cow pasture remains relatively recognizable and okay.

Or not, as was the case on 9/11.

Or today.

Today, The Washington Post headline reads: Prime Minister: Worst crisis since World War II. And the lead story is Authorities fear meltdown possiblity at Fukushima plant.

Such impersonally cataclysmic days as this one (and there have, thankfully, not been many) always make me think of the day in 1963 when John F. Kennedy was killed. I was holed up in an isolated girls’ boarding school in Massachusetts. Rumors of Kennedy’s assassination had gone flying around all afternoon, but I’d paid them no attention – rumors were always flying around my boarding school. Then I saw the school’s flag lowered to half-mast and knew this particular rumor was true.  I also knew that a far-away action had irrevocably changed my world.

What I remember is how much I wanted to do something to help and how, in those days, I couldn’t think of anything at all useful to do. The world was wounded and I had no power to join in its healing. I have never, before or since felt quite so isolated and impotent.

Today, however, it occurred to me that as person of faith, I’m reacting quite differently to the news that the world is enduring what I can only  (old hippie that I am) describe as cosmic mayhem. Instead of feeling isolated by disaster, I feel united with you and everyone who gives a damn about something other than their own survival as one of the fittest. In my opinion, those of us without specific disaster expertise probably can’t really help Japan or its people in any way other than to give a few bucks, but you and I can help the world heal by resolving to live our partnerships with God even more scrupulously; to be as kind and useful as we can toward everyone who comes our way. It’s as though we’re doing what we can to strengthen the world’s healing connection to God, by strengthening my own.

Chuck is a welcome newcomer to our conversation. In one of his posts he wrote something that I find so completely relevant to living as an unwounded inhabitant of our gravely wounded world.

. . .If there is a God (which I believe), we don’t have all the answers for a reason…..we don’t need them. Life is about living every day; we don’t need a spiritual map from some mystical being or divine guide. If God exist it is not to rule or force us into submission and worship but to walk with us as we live everyday to the fullest with the greatest gift….Life.

The longer I live in partnership with God, the great Whatever, the simpler faith gets: It involves nothing more or less than doing what I may to help whomever I can every day.

We can only do what we can do; but we must  take care to do that.

Tags: faith, faith in action, God, living our faith, unconventional faith

Feed for this entry. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.