View From West Mountain
In the James Cagney movie “Angels With Dirty Faces” from 1938, the constant refrain heard among Cagney and his street gang was “Give it a name.” It was akin to more recent “street” responses to truth telling, “Right on” or perhaps, “Word”.
God is with us.
Thinking back to the winter of 2020, I did not hear anyone say, “What we need now is a good ol’ pandemic.” No, no one even hinted at it. Needless to say, outside of perhaps a few infectious disease experts and scientists who apparently had little power to spread their concerns, no one on earth had any clue what was to come.
And as we move into the fall of 2021 concerns over COVID 19 continue to amp up and diminish and amp up again, with each new day. And it is hard. It is hard to get things done. It is hard socially and emotionally, it is hard spiritually, and it is hard to make sense of all that we have been a part of. At the same time, our prevailing sense is that we need to “begin to prepare to think about, getting started to get going”. And yet, so much of it feels like wheels spinning with no traction.
That is where we are. And God is with us. The late Michael Yaconelli, in his book, Messy Spirituality, would let us know that culturally, we are spiritually “stuck”. Collectively, we are treading water in a flowing stream and our course is not of our own making or entirely under our control. That is where we are. God is with us.
Family therapist Pauline Boss, in her book, Ambiguous Loss, uses the same term, “stuck”, to describe the phase in the grieving process when we are overwhelmed, when definitions are blurred, and one cannot “make out the forest for the trees.” She writes that one therapeutically effective practice at such times is to tell our stories enough to allow us to name what is happening. Give it a name. Give it a name.
We are all in a time of grief and ambiguous loss. We are mired in circumstances and yet, we are not alone. God is with us.
We return to outdoor services at 10 AM this Sunday, September 5th. The desire to worship in full voice, with less risk of transmission of any disease makes this decision easy. Come! Bring a friend. Take the time to be with God. God is with us.
The Rev. Mark Diters
