Rev. Earl Johnson on the unsettling of day-to-day life

The Intensity of Nothing Happening

When the needs are so great, and the resources so few, compassion fatigue took hold.

When fear became real and harnessed imagination, awareness became an under-anticipated casualty.

The Secretary of Homeland Security ‘has a feeling’ that something big might happen.

The weatherman gets excited about severe storms and thrives upon issuing warnings. Maps swirl.

Walking through another airport concourse, the aural wallpaper of Alert Level Orange goes unheard in most layers of the brain, and, the frustration hunkers in a bit tighter.

Anticipating attacks and anticipating the unknown wears away at the soul and heart. Breathing and sighing join in an unholy alliance. Day by day, the nation may feel alert fatigue, while night by night dreams are grabbed through nightmares.

This may be the high point of our fall. The arc of preparation and reason and faith, transcending what we know is just over the horizon.

All that we know to be true may be questioned. To remain steadfast and true, no doubts.

Our efforts may be plans for last year’s dead, and, dissecting those disasters and how they fell.

There is so much to be done. There is so much that would overwhelm. Activate or Paralyze. Our grief unlimited. Our rage unchecked. To do something, anything, to prevent or delay the onslaught, the inevitable, to understand what is criminal and define the crime. The Mayor of New Orleans responded to the current high murder rate as, perhaps, a good thing, as it kept the unmet needs of the city in the nation’s headlines.

How do we know which bridges need to be repaired? They are the ones that have fallen.

Back-to-school shopping may include technologies for survival, and, more than innocence is lost. Public service holds far less job security, and vocations seemingly make some wealthy feel poor.

Faith can be a victim of age and violence. A generation of young soldiers felled by mustard gas, flu, and convention, impacted religious practice, ritual, and thought after World War I. An Age of Anxiety accompanied the end of World War II. Theological reflections after 9/11, the Asian Tsunami, and Katrina also under-addressed modern suffering in these severe historical contexts, and, for some, faith also became another casualty. How replaces why.

For many survivors of Katrina and the Twin Towers, faith is all they had, and remains the primary ‘coping’ mechanism. For others, these catastrophes and the wars that accompanied them – both military and cultural – signaled the waning of religion. Treatises on the goodness of a Divinity, and, the secular evidence of reason thrive in the marketplace.

Disasters helped point out preexisting differences in our society, and, prophetic religion engaged the central mission of response. Persons of faith respond to those in need, those who are suffering, with compassion and action. Prayers echo the power to respond, the ability to serve, and model altruistic care. Prayers for safe passage. Safe journeys in the lands that have been destroyed. To cross streams and find still waters, to restore scarred souls.

Church attendance may be down, but airports and highways are full. A chaplain knows all of these things. A chaplain has felt these things before and knows they will come again. There is so much not happening today. There are so many things I need to do that are not done before something happens again.

Am I enough? All that I am and all that you are now, knowing what and when to claim our authority, or remain, just be, a presence on the perimeter? Spirit and breath. Peace?

Knowing the predators and entrepreneurs also seek the weak and suffering, and circle in the shadows and sometimes brazenly in the light with answers to everything, and, more. It’s not possible to keep the gate, when the walls have fallen over. To shut the door, when the roof has blown away. To fear the night when there are no stars to lead the way.

Do you have thoughts about advocacy you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send an e-mail to info@PlainViews.org.