How Do We Be?

Anything worth doing / is worth doing badly. / No one ever did something well
without doing it poorly first. / But if we’re going to get real,
the chances of your ever getting / really good are slim at best.
The Olympics and the pro leagues / fled with the end of puberty.
Maybe the Nobel or Pulitzer / is out there waiting, but / I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Even on our best days / most of us are merely competent, / and much of the time
adequate is a stretch. / Appearances aside, this might be
one of the happiest things I know.
I hereby absolve you / of the need to be better / than anyone else.  Poof.
It is possible to suck at things / with great love. Grab your uke
and I’ll get my mandolin.
Meet me on the porch. We’ll play together, under tempo
and ever so slightly out of tune.
        —“Badly” by Lynn Ungar (5/14/20)

There is a tenuous light appearing at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel, and many of us are leaning forward trying to glimpse what a “new normal” might look like. Yet even as we lean in, hopeful, we are as exhausted as we’ve been at any time over the past year. The constant changes, adjustments, isolation, fear, grief, and anxiety have taken their tolls on our spiritual, emotional, and physical health. And so, it is no surprise to me that many of us feel a mixture of excitement and dread at the prospect of opening up (churches, schools, restaurants, gyms, theaters, etc. etc.) and moving our next stage of life together.
Recently, I listened to the On Being Project interview between host Krista Tippett and clinical psychologist and community health professor Christine Runyan (Christine Runyan — What’s Happening in Our Nervous Systems? | The On Being Project - The On Being Project).
 

I highly recommend it! Their conversation centered on the ways that stress and trauma have affected our bodies—particularly our nervous systems—and our entire lives over the past year as we navigate the treacherous ground of pandemic, along with multiple racial reckonings and ruptures, the brutality and fallout of the election, and ongoing economic and safety uncertainties. Runyan explains that the pandemic has disrupted our mind-body connection, and that disruption has become the shaky foundation on which we have carried all of the other events and losses and traumas that have followed.  None of this has been easy. And expecting that we might walk effortlessly through this hazardous terrain is unrealistic and potentially harmful. We only have what we have to deal with the challenges we face, and of course—of course!—we are feeling overwhelm, irritability, frustration. . . .  Just look at our current conditions. Your responses to our current reality—whatever they are—are normal responses to the layers of trauma we are living through in these incredibly unfamiliar, unusual, unpredictable, uncontrollable circumstances.  Our responses might be fight or flight (highly activated adrenaline); our responses might be freeze (apathy, detachment, disembodiment, dissociation, numbing). The fact is that our windows of tolerance—however big or small—have been disrupted by the virus and our surrounding social circumstances. Tenderness and compassion with ourselves are necessary.
 

So, what do we do? Or, perhaps more appropriately, how do we be? Runyun says, “We are pretty conditioned to turn away from discomfort and suffering in our society. We are not very good at allowing for grief, which is always on its own timeline, and it’s unpredictable in its own right. And this is a tough one, because it’s not a pinpoint experience . . . because we’re still in it. We’re trying to grieve a trauma that is still ongoing. And I don’t have the answer to how to do that, other than one breath at a time.” So, perhaps, we start by naming the trauma, the grief, we feel. Perhaps we start by extending compassion—to ourselves and those around us. Perhaps we start by breathing—one breath at a time. Remembering that we are not alone. Acknowledging that we are connected to a beautiful community of faith and an abundant and abundantly loving God who never forsakes us, no matter our circumstances. And we must take this compassionate engagement into our conversations with one another about when and how and where we gather moving forward. There is no right or wrong answer. And HOW we make our decisions is as important as the decisions themselves. There is no doubt our lives have been changed. My prayer is that we are ever-more-deeply led by compassion and grace.


See you in (zoom) church,  
Christy