2020 has been an anxious year.
I don’t think I’m alone in that observation, either. Between every tempest in a social media teapot to the tempests in a test tube (Coronavirus), I don’t think many people are hanging on to this year as an example of living their best life. But then, when I look back, it’s often been the times when you struggle to find peace, to find beauty –and then find it– that I remember with less than the pain that they should bring. There’s something precious about joy that’s fought for and won. And this year, if there’s ever been a year, has been one where joy hasn’t come without a fight.
I’ve been so grateful to live where I do these days. June is still my favorite here. Temps in the low 80’s (usually), abundant sunshine, just enough rain and thunder to break up the monotony, and everything greens. Scientists in New York and other cities pointed out that during the time when we were all sheltering in place that there was a noticeable quiet. They could hear bird song again over everything else that was normally drowned out by the shuffle and bang of vehicles and machinery. Animals wandered the streets without the usual interference of people and bicycles and cars getting in their way, threatening. For the birds and rats and deer and opossums of the city, 2020 has been a less anxious time.
Which makes me realize what I have here. The sound level here really didn’t change at all. Perhaps fewer trailers full of screaming hogs being carted to their futures as bacon and ham. Fewer trucks clatter-banging over the railroad crossing just down the street from our house. The train that hauls corn and ethanol back and forth from one end of town to Worthington didn’t seem to pause much. Then again, the 6:30am train horn doesn’t wake me for long any more. I can’t really say I noticed. And the wrens in our back yard have always had enough aural space to be heard. Their only competition is the wind in the trees and grass today, and really, that’s more of an accompaniment than competition.
It’s startlingly easy to lose track of the outside world –that is, the world that the news media thinks is worth covering– on the porch. My “outdoor office,” I call it. Looking into my computer screen, I can see CNN’s concern about the President’s slurred speech and stumbling down a ramp, and I see Twitter trending things like #ww3. Close the computer, though, and it all goes away. Or, rather, my awareness of it does, for a little while. Not much has changed from last June to this one, judging by the sound level and wildlife count …and the height of my lawn, which always seems to need a mow.
Which brings up the question in my mind: what matters to me, anyway? What should matter? I read a book many years ago called Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, written by a guy named Jerry Mander. No kidding –that’s his actual name. In the book, he makes the case that television news distorts our impression of the world. Before television, we got the news from word of mouth, news often days or weeks old. Later, we developed newspapers, delivering day-old news at our doorstep each morning. Now we can flip on our screen and watch “news” as it happens. The book was written in the 1970’s, before we might have even been able to fathom the permanently scarring effect of watching 9/11 unfold on live television news. Relevance changes when you’re watching things happen. And relevance changes when you can see the whole world in a little lighted box. The potential answer to the question, “And who is my neighbor?” changes when that lighted box expands your virtual neighborhood to an entire world –places we’d never set foot. No wonder it’s so easy to feel anxious about it and so difficult to know where to start in terms of making it better.
In a way, it seems like television news has made the world’s business our business, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Yes, it’s putting my head in the sand, but sometimes I’d just rather not know. I believe that the abundance of knowledge is what produces that buzz of white-noise anxiety that’s ramped up in the past few years. Knowing is a burden –that’s a Biblical concept, according to Ecclesiastes 1:18. The thing I question is whether or not that burden keeps us so overloaded with things that we can’t possibly change that we have no emotional space left to listen to the burdens of our physical (dare I say real?) neighbors. It’s a sticky question, and the “what will people think?” side of me is hearing you accuse me of not caring. But that’s not it, really. We’re not off the hook. Where is lasting change most immediately and effectively made? Locally. Not on social media or through an institution (though those things have a place). We can fly somewhere else for a week or two and do a “mission trip,” without really knowing a place or its people at all. We can send money somewhere and never know the impact it will have. But we can also get to know our actual neighbors and shoulder the burden of their everyday apocalypses. Cancer. Loved ones dying. Job loss. Illness.
Read in context, Acts 1:7-8, the “Great Commission,” addresses the disciples’ anxiety:
“When they were together for the last time they asked, ‘Master, are you going to restore the Kingdom to Israel now? Is this the time?'”
I think perhaps they were concerned with what they saw as priority: kicking some Gentile butt and making sure that God’s victory was clear in terms of enabling Israel to come to political power. Jesus responds:
“He told them, ‘You don’t get to know the time. Timing is the Father’s business. What you’ll get is the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes on you, you will be able to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all over Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the world.'”
In summer Bible camp, one of our leaders pointed out to us that this commission to make disciples goes like a ripple in a pond. Jerusalem was their immediate neighborhood, and the commission started there. The vision of the disciples could never be as immense or grand as the vision of God. He just showed them where to start, and assured us that He’d take care of the rest. We don’t get to know the time, though the signs of a world on fire are everywhere. But we do have power to start in Jerusalem, our own backyard. And for me, that relieves a whole lot of anxiety.
Until, that is, I realize that actually have to pay attention and do it. But then, that’s where the Holy Spirit comes in, right?
