how then shall we live in this season of loss...

From time to time I just can't help myself so today I once again wade into the volatile waters of my nation's politics and culture to share a few thoughts. The catalyst was the opeing essay in Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost. She makes the observation that there are two distinct understandings of lost:

Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the
familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing. There are objects and people that disappear from your sight or knowledge or possession; you lose a bracelet, a friend, the key. You still know where you are. Everything is familiar except that there is one item less, one missing element. Or you get lost, in which case the world has become larger than your knowledge of it. Either way, there is a loss of control. Imagine yourself streaming through time shedding gloves, umbrellas, wrenches, books, friends, homes, names. This is what the view looks like if you take a rear-facing seat on the train. Looking forward you constantly acquire moments of arrival, moments of realization, moments of discovery. The wind blows your hair back and you are greeted by what you have never seen before. The material falls away in onrushing experience. It peels off like skin from a molting snake. Of course to forget the past is to lose the sense of loss that is also memory of an absent richness and a set of clues to navigate the present by; the art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.

Her comment that "getting lost... is a case where the world becomes larger than our knowledge of it" hit home after pondering Tom Friedman's most recent column in the Sunday NY Times where he states:

For all you knuckleheads on Fox who say that Biden can’t put two sentences together, here’s a news flash: He just put NATO together, Europe together and the whole Western alliance together — stretching from Canada up to Finland and all the way to Japan — to help Ukraine protect its fledgling democracy from Vladimir Putin’s fascist assault. In doing so, he has enabled Ukraine to inflict significant losses on Russia’s invading army, thanks to a rapid deployment of U.S. and NATO trainers and massive transfers of precision weapons. And not a single American soldier was lost. Alas, though, I left our lunch with a full stomach but a heavy heart. Biden didn’t say it in so many words, but he didn’t have to. I could hear it between the lines: He’s worried that while he has reunited the West, he may not be able to reunite America. (check it all out here: (check it out here: https://www.nytimes.com/ 2022/05/22/opinion/biden-trump-republicans-democrats.html?)

This loss is sad and sobering: it is certainly a case of reality becoming bigger than my comprehension and way beyond my control. It's an assesment by a savvy and time-tested pundit: you may not agree with Friedman on some things - and I often don't - but you can't argue with his sense that something vital and valuable is slipping away and may soon be lost:

It’s clearly (Biden's) priority, above any Build Back Better provision. And he knows that’s why he was elected — a majority of Americans worried that the country was coming apart at the seams and that this old war horse called Biden, with his bipartisan instincts, was the best person to knit us back together. It’s the reason he decided to run in the first place, because he knows that without some basic unity of purpose and willingness to compromise, nothing else is possible. But with every passing day, every mass shooting, every racist dog whistle, every defund-the-police initiative, every nation-sundering Supreme Court ruling, every speaker run off a campus, every bogus claim of election fraud, I wonder if he can bring us back together. I wonder if it’s too late. I fear that we’re going to break something very valuable very soon. And once we break it, it will be gone — and we may never be able to get it back. I am talking about our ability to transfer power peacefully and legitimately, an ability we have demonstrated since our founding.

This is loss as tragedy. It did not have to happen. It is neither snipping from the sidelines of relevancy as is the want of so many pundits on the left nor the salacious carping for ratings practiced by the pitiful right wing entertainers of Murdoch's TV network. No, Friendman is a mainstream media professional who paid his dues covering the politics of disintegration in Israel and Lebanon. His feelings of fear and analysis of loss resonate with my own. Reading this report from our most trusted ally in Canada amplified my concern. CBC Montreal carried a story this morning that should shake and wake everyone who values living in an open and democratic society.

Canada's intelligence community will have to grapple with the growing
influence of anti-democratic forces in the United States — including the threat posed by conservative media outlets like Fox News — says a new report from a task force of intelligence experts: "The United States is and will remain our closest ally, but it could also become a source of threat and instability," says a newly published report written by a task force of former national security advisers, former Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) directors, ex-deputy ministers, former ambassadors and academics. Members of the group have advised both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former prime minister Stephen Harper. Now is the time for the federal government to rethink how it approaches national security, the report concludes.

(read the article @ https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/national-security-us-fox-news-threat-report-1.6459660)

And now add yet another mass slaughter of innocent children and educators by one more unmoored young man with a battery of guns. A constellation of middle-of-the-road analysts throughout the world, especially those above the 49th parallel, have concluded that the USA is on the verge of breaking. Friedman asks what other conclusion is possible now that we're living through an era when lying about telling the truth (a la Kevin McCarthy) is normative. The credibility of the United States, often compromised like every institution but also historically striving to build a more perfect union, is crumbling. This troubles and frustrates President Biden as Friendman observes:

(This) clearly weighs on him... we have built a global alliance to support Ukraine, to reverse the Russian invasion and to defend core American principles abroad — the right to freedom and self-determination of all peoples — while the G.O.P. is abandoning our most cherished principles at home. That is why so many allied leaders have privately said to Biden, as he and his team have revived the Western alliance from the splintered pieces that Trump left it in, “Thank God — America is back.” And then they add, “But for how long?” Biden cannot answer that question. Because WE cannot answer that question.

As a rule, I find solace in God's first word - Mother Nature - both for the clues creation offers us re: the sacred presence in our reality as well as the personal perspective she brings to my journey of trust in chaotic times. In my part of the world, there is a modicum of order playing out as Spring ripens into early Summer and each day grows warmer and more alive. As the wise old preacher, Qoheleth of Ecclesiastes fame, reminds us: "There is NOTHING new under the sun" because there:

Is a season and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to break down and a time to build up; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek and a time to lose; a time to keep and a time to throw away; a time to tear and a time to sew; a time to keep silent and a time to speak; a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace.

But even the well-ordered serenity of my rural solitude and its beauty cannot hide the loss taking place within and among us. The once arbitrary disasters in nature are becoming as common place as mass murders given climate change which suggests that we're NOT going to be able to dodge another political/cultural/spiritual/ecological bullet: this has become our season of disintegration and we're going to know break down, weeping, and the gnashing of teeth. Leonard Cohen prophetically told us: "I've seen the future, man, and it's murder."

I have studiously avoided TV news this week - and chosen not to read the editorial commentaries, too - because some simply recycle the self-righteous platitudes of the past while others only evoke despair without redress. At this moment in time I can only say: "Stick a fork in them - they're done!" Still, I ask how, then, shall we live into this time of loss, collapse, fear, and disorder? Two clues rise to the surface: 

+ First, our long suffering indigenous neighbors are offering some insights. With grace as well as irony, their elders insist that sharing wisdom about enduring during disaster is NOT cultural appropriation, a must to avoid, because caring is what a good neighbor does. Siku Allooloo wrote in YES! Magazine:

Last spring I spent some time with a very knowledgeable and beloved elder, Ethel Lamothe. We were at Dechinta Bush University—a Northern organization based outside of Yellowknife that delivers Indigenous education on the land and one of the saving graces in my own educational journey. I was helping her scrape a moose hide in preparation for tanning, and as our hands worked we talked about womanhood, spirituality, and bush medicines. She told me about the work she and others did in previous decades to advance decolonization, social transformation, and healing in Denendeh and also shared insight about the challenges. I had been troubled lately about the gap between elders and young people, the cultural inheritance being lost, the growing alienation I see in current generations, and the complexity of overcoming all these challenges when we are starting from such fragmentation. At one point Ethel stopped and said: “Our society is full of holes now, like the ones in this hide. So we have to sew them up. Where there’s a hole there instead of a mother or a father, an aunty or grandparent steps in to raise the kids. We have holes in our spirituality and culture, how we relate to each other and deal with things, so we have to find ways to relearn that. You know, we lost some of our own ceremonies and ways of praying, but we can learn from other cultures who still have it. You don’t have any grandmothers to teach what you need to know as a woman, so you adopt a new grandmother who can teach you. So we do it like that. We sew it up.”  

+ Second, the time-tested medicine of First Nations wisdom-keepers resonates with the prophets of the Hebrew Bible concerning lamentation: when we find ourselves by the waters of Babyon, and those in power ask us to keep singing our old songs as if nothing had changed, we must refuse. We cannot hurry along our descent into grief nor self-medicate our way out of our anguish. We must face it. Own it. Listen to it and embrace it. This is sack cloth and ashes time where weeping by the waters of Babylon is prelude to understanding and resistance. anything. Humility is to become our guide - and so many of us in the dominante culture have yet to practice letting go. We still think and act as if doing what we've always done can bring about something salvific when the truth is that until we own that we are lost we can't be found. Another indigenous wisdom keeper, 

Taiaiake Alfred, tells us:

There is a role in Indigenous resurgence for non-Indigenous people. They can play a part in the decolonization of this land simply by disassociating themselves from the privileges that are built into being part of the settler society, softening the stifling grip mainstream society has on Indigenous existences. Forgoing the need to be right, to be in charge, and to possess. Embracing the discomfort of the unsettled existence of an ally committed to the strength and well-being of Indigenous nations. Just as with the Indigenous people who are defining resurgence through their unscripted creative contention and generative acts of love for the land, there is no template or menu for allyship. For all of us, Indigenous and settler alike, there is only self-questioning and embracing this commitment: Listen to the voices of our Indigenous ancestors channeled through the young people of our nations, learn from Indigenous culture how to walk differently, and love the land as best you can.

My take on this season of loss and disintegration is becoming clear: the politics of self-imolation that now energize the elite of the United States is also birthing a new humility among some of us. Our loss is breaking our hearts open. We are starting to intellectually comprehend and spiritually sense that before new life and resurrection can happen among us, a great death must take place. It will be every bit as apocalyptic as the prophets portend - and it is going to much worse before it gets better. There must be a critical mass committed to grief work in the US where we empty our soul. As ancient Israel's prophets and our own indigenous wisdom-keeper know: only when we are empty, bereft and accountable for our hubris, are we free to grasp and respond to the presence of grace that God aches to share with us. 

Already some of the insights of resistance and resurgence are taking shape within
the artistic periphery of our culture. But there's too much arrogoance, busyness, shame, and deceit taking place for us to hear it with clarity. We're still too moored to the past to give birth to the future. So, we must wait for the Spirit while we groan with sighs too deep for human words. As Brother Leonard told us: I've seen the future, man, and it's murder. How, then, shall we live? Our indigenous neighbors suggest what the Hebrew Bible proclaims: exile is real but it is not the end of the story. Look at post WWII Germany that continues to rise up from the ashes of Nazi devastation. By creating and savoring as much beauty as is possible; by grieving what is being lost within and among us; by owning our arrogance and violence; and by listening carefully to those on the periphery who have learned how to renew their souls and communities in the worst of times we, too can mature and overcome. 

For the time being, I believe people of faith must carefully and conscientiously model lament within our grief resistant culture: we must take the unknown path into the darkness trusting that there is light on the other side. For as our tradition teaches: we are to journey by faith not sight. We will need to maintain close contact with those who love us if we're to endure. Solidarity is not an add-on or incidental, but an essential spiritual discipline for our era of lamentation. So, too our periodic feasts and fasts and celebrations that keep us connected to the bigger picture. Other nations and cultures have lived through what we are entering and tell those with ears to hear:

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, “Here I am.” If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your needs in parched places and make your bones strong, and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in. (Isaiah 58)

credits:

1) Holly Van Hadt @ https://hollyvanhart.com/abstract-forest-painting-wandering-in-wonder/
2) Domen Lo @ https://www.artmajeur.com/en/domen-lo/artworks/7929388/the-wandering-eye
3) Flags @ https://flagwix.com/products/canada-us-friendship-american-canadian-flag-thh3749gf/?attribute_size=4x6+ft.&attribute_type=No+Flagpole+Mounting+Rings&gclid=CjwKCAjwyryUBhBSEiwAGN5OCHLQJRYOtHunGYqXuCeLHyGo7kzhTooYfrcif1WlvwxyujwNa7x6XRoC0SIQAvD_BwE
4) lumsden garden
5) First Nations Art @ https://www.mutualart.com/Exhibition/Juncture--First-Nations-Art-at-NERAM/595C75959BE3B7B3
6) Lament @ https://artandtheology.org/tag/lament/
7) George Grosz, Hitler in Hell @ https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2020/01/24/hitler-in-hell-german-historical-museum-acquires-george-grosz-painting
8) Marc Chagall, Isaiah @ https://www.imago-images.com/st/0126166663