What to Do at This Moment?

The world is a dumpster fire right now. The situation in the Middle East is heart breaking, both because of the human toll on innocent Israelis and Palestinians and because there doesn't seem to be a way forward. The war in Ukraine rages on. Drug overdose deaths are up 30 percent year over year. September was the hottest its been in nearly 200 years of climate record keeping. The polls suggest that Donald Trump will almost certainly be the Republican candidate in the 2024 election and he could very well become president again.

So what does one person do?

In my childhood home, Robert F. Kennedy's words from his 1966 speech at the University of Capetown were posted on the bulletin board in the kitchen, alongside the emergency numbers and youth soccer schedule.  The excerpt was this: 

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

I took note and taped these to the wall over my desk at my first real job on Capitol Hill, reminding me that there was a purpose to my efforts that was bigger than the daily grind of answering constituent mail. They spurred me on to a career focused on improving health care, particularly for those with low incomes.

But what to do at this particular moment when everything all at once seems to be headed south? I could write to my member of Congress, except as a District resident, my representative does not have a vote or much of a voice. I could consume a steady diet of news and opinion about all the world's ills and endlessly discuss my angst and my preferred solutions with friends and family.

To what end? I don't think anyone has noticed that I don't patronize Chick-Fil-A because its owners are big contributors to organizations that foster hate against the LGBTQ+ community, or that I stay away from The Wharf due to the unconscionable development deal struck by the city with property owners who cater primarily to the wealthy. I'd be kidding myself to think that these actions are resolving problems. Or that I have the power to affect all the world's troubles all at once. 

So then what?

These days my acts to improve the lots of others are small, one might say infinitesimal. They include filling up the Little Free Library at the transitional housing facility for families, sending weekly greeting cards to lonely nursing home residents as part of the Letters Against Isolation campaign, advocating for affordable housing in affluent Upper Northwest DC, writing get-out-the-vote postcards to folks in states with important elections, and selling pies to support Food & Friends, a local organization that provides nourishing meals to people dealing with chronic illness. 

Do these tiny acts send out the "tiny ripples of hope" as RFK suggested?  I've been thinking about this a lot and honestly, I'm not so sure. But in the end, I do these things not because I think they make a huge difference or even because doing them makes me feel better. Rather I know that if I did nothing, I'd feel as if I hadn't tried. And for now, that will have to be enough.

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As a postscript, I wanted to share a prayer offered by Rabbi Sarah Krinsky at a recent prayer vigil convened by the Washington Interfaith Network. I found her words both sorrowful and comforting, a combination that seems pitch perfect right now.

Eloheinu v’elohei avoteinu v’imoteinu - our God and God of our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah 

God of Jesus and his disciples, God of Muhammad and his descendants 

God of mothers. God of lovers. God of children, magical and  real 

God of fighters. God of peacemakers. God of peace.

God of those who call out, who cry out. God of those who cry

God of those who are angry at God. God of those at whom God is angry.

God of those who have lost their way, lost their faith, God of those who have abandoned and of those who have been abandoned. God of the godless

God who performs miracles. God of past and of present. God of an imagined future

God of the captives, of the un-free. 

God of those holding onto hope. God of those who are drowning in despair. God of those who are drowning and those who are thirsty and of those who thirst for something better

Our God, all of our God - to you we pray. 

We pray to you knowing that you are getting a lot of prayers these days. Prayers that are coming a mile a minute, language by language, prayers from a parent, then a child, then a parent again. Your divine ears, oh god, must be brimming, overflowing with the endless cacophony. Please, oh God. Please no, oh God. If only, I promise, just guide me, oh God. 

But we know, God, that you hear not just with ears, but with an endlessly expansive and capacious heart. A heart that does not just recognize words but that sees pain. A heart that doesn’t just listen to liturgy but that senses loss, or despair, of hope, or faith, or love. 

Hear us with that heart, oh God. Hear our yearning. Witness our connection. See that we’re trying. See that we’re crying. Hear us with that heart. And help us to hear, to witness, to see and to love in Your image, as your holy emissaries in this messy broken world. 

Baruch atah adonai, shomei tefillah - blessed are you, oh God, who hears all prayers.

Happy Pride

 

Remembering 9/11

I couldn't bring myself to write something in advance about the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks -- in part because I felt that I had nothing to say that hadn't been said a thousand times before and a thousand times better by others and in part because the news late last week of "credible but unconfirmed" information about possible attacks on New York and Washington sent my heart to racing once again.

I didn't know anyone who died in the attack on the Pentagon, at the World Trade Center, or in that field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania so I wasn't seared by a personal loss of someone I loved.  But hearing the news and watching it all unfold on TV from my office that day, just four blocks from the White House, was downright scary.  I didn't know where my husband, who spent a good part of most days on Capitol Hill, might be and our babysitter wasn't answering the phone at home, meaning she and my two year old were somewhere out and about.  There were reports of a car bomb in front of the State Department, fires at Bolling Air Force base; all of it seemed both surreal and oddly credible.  I called my mom and asked her to pick up my daughter at school if I didn't make it home and then I set off on foot, walking the five miles home, too afraid to get on the metro.   My walk took me past the elementary school where kids were being released as parents could pick them up.  And when we approached our house, I saw that my husband and younger child had made it home safe and sound.

But nothing felt safe and sound, not for a long time, as we waited for the other shoe to drop.  Every plane that roared by filled me with dread.  Every scare made me panic.  Then there were the anthrax attacks and just as the region was starting to recover, we were again terrorized by a deranged sniper.  And in the face of all this, there was nothing to do but just get on with it.  Go to work, go to school, do the grocery shopping, mow the lawn, and hug your kids, and hold tight to your spouse.

Ten years later, I could write about the mess we've made in Iraq and Afghanistan, the international goodwill we squandered, the xenophobia stirred up by the war on terror, the heroism of first responders, the poise of the victims' families.  But you can read the newspapers, listen to the radio or TV, attend a memorial service to be reminded of all that and more.  For my part, I am trying just to remember that being afraid is wasted energy and that the time to offer up our best selves -- to family, community, nation, and self -- is right now.