Many years ago as I grieved the worst loss I have ever known, someone sent me this prayer handwritten on a card: Father, give me the strength to wait for hope — to look through the window when there are no stars. Even when my joy is gone, give me the strength to stand in the darkest night and say, “Father, the sun still shines.” I will have reached the point of greatest strength once I have learned to wait for hope.
I love the prayer because it acknowledges that unspeakable helplessness of overwhelming loss. It doesn’t promise that good will arise from suffering. Nobody who is that low can even imagine an “after this is over” time. It doesn’t make the suffering my fault for being faithless or weak. It seems to say that hope has its own timing, and it can be expected but not summoned.
Anyway, your sermon, the idea of extremis being the threshold of hope made me think of this.
Your words are like a lightening bolt to my heart. My soul. In a time that I so desperately need it.
I’ve shied away from Christianity for 40 years. I consider myself Buddhist, but ever so often a little light shines in me from your words. Please keep going, as hard as it is right now. Know that you are giving hopeless people hope in a hopeless time.
Hear me when I tell you that you matter. You are making a difference. I am grateful for your offerings.
I’m so glad I listened and didn’t just read it. Your birthday inflection and facial expressions added so much to the depth of your words. The breast cancer and the anxiety and the Trump voting husband....Just a footnote. Thank you 💜
Grief, anxiety, depression, are all so very real. Of course, joy, happiness and security are real as well. But the former is much more a fabric of 2020 than the latter. All the while we are receiving and giving less human touch than any other times in our lives because of COVID-19.
Smiles are hard to distinguish behind masks. Hands are not being held and hugs are not being given. Our physical and emotional safety nets are thread bare due to quarantines, isolation, and safety measures.
Loved ones are dying alone. Funerals are being cancelled.
Weddings are being postponed. Grandparents are not able to hold their newborn grandchildren.
People in hospitals, nursing homes, residential facilities and yes, even prisons, are not being visited. As such, the isolated are now more alone than ever.
Once gainfully employed people are now unemployed or under employed through no fault of their own.
Many children are unable to spend time with their friends and schoolmates.
Hate is spewing and those of us in marginalized communities are feeling a sense of fear and dread that reminds us of painful times in our lives and makes us fearful of more painful times in the future.
… and while we try in our human mind to tell ourselves this will end one day, (and it will), it is very difficult, if not impossible, to see that from here. The weight of this and so much more on the human heart makes it hard to breathe sometimes.
Today is one of those days for me. Tomorrow will be better, perhaps a touch lighter … but today is heavy. Today is not heavy because I am weak, or crazy, or pessimistic. Today is harder because I am human, and self-care rarely makes it to the top of my list. So, I find myself at a crossroads. I can make self-care a priority or I can swirl the drain until I drown, or things look up (which is not likely to occur before I drown). Both are hard roads. I think I am inclined to go the self-care route … I am not very good at that route … and in truth do not know what that would even look like … but I am going to give it a whirl and pray tomorrow is a brighter, lighter day. I am going to pray that your day is lighter and brighter tomorrow, too.
Thank you for an aha moment. Long ago I was married to an abusive man. Our marriage counselor called him a sociopath. Scary words to hear as a 24 year old. My anxiety has been so high because I know that abusers are most dangerous when their control is threatened or upended. Your words are great reminder of the hope we have. Of the audacity of faith in the spiritual. Of the power of love.
As one who was bullied in Junior High School (AKA now as middle school) and even through high school, I am very grateful for today's post. 40 years after my high school graduation I got up enough nerve to attend my class reunion for the first time. That is when the bullies finally became a footnote. I realized that had still had friends in my class, and that the bullies were only a few of my classmates, not every one of them as I thought. I also found that most of them didn't even remember the bullying that they did.
Now my extreme reaction to the bullies of today makes total sense to me. I will pray for the conversion of my anxiety. Thank you, Nadia.
Nadia, I want to add to my earlier comment about my anguish, as a Canadian with American family, over the current turmoil in the United States. I have tried in the past week to follow your mother's prayers that you shared with us. I wish I could say, as she did "I'm grateful for my family that loves you and loves each other without the condition of agreeing". I hope and pray that will come to pass. I was overwhelmed by her prayer "Help me not to judge others just because they sin differently than I do," Can I live up to that and still hope that the outgoing President will ultimately be relegated to a constantly diminishing footnote in the long scroll of governance? I need the grace to find a balance.
Thank you, Nadia. Even with the constant, loving support of my church and others with whom I share in faith, my anxiety makes my prayer difficult. Without those supports it would be impossible. I am a Canadian who is in anguish about the situation in the United States, for many reasons. Some of my American relatives are in the thrall of the current President and I cannot talk to them. I am trying to find a common base of love and faith but it is not easy. I ask for prayers of all.
I keep returning to "The World Is Very Dangerous" message from an obscure collection of Rabbi Carol Meyers sermons called "Leaning on God" (50 cents in a library book sale, nice).
Shechinah is what she calls it. re "Shechinah, the in-dwelling presence of God, is all around us, all the time, if we could only train ourselves to perceive it; to be constantly aware. Moreover, we have the power to embody the Shechinah , in the acts we choose to do, in the words we say, in our ability to connect with other human beings and to recognize God in them. All around us is Shechinah" It has and does and will always give us the courage to cope. Hitler, smallpox 'Nam, Nixon, cancer, Katrina, HIV-AIDS, 9-11, Columbine, COVID, Trump and whatever comes next.
Always all around us is Shechinah always the courage to cope. I like that idea.
I used to have a lot of anxiety around the word revival and the various forms of the word, but I think I have a new relationship with it today. Thank you for reviving this sermon; the word revive and many others in it revived me today. Your delivery had something to do with it, too. ;-)
Footnotes versus legacy. Today, for a few minutes, I got to reconnect with my high school forensics coach - me from Seoul, South Korea, and my coach in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. It was only for a few minutes on a phone call. I haven't seen her in decades. One of her biggest worries is about Trump. I told her that someday Trump will be a footnote and his actions will be reversed, but that her legacy will live on and will spread around the world in me and in those that I teach and coach and in those that they teach.... Teachers and coaches and your sermon give me hope today.
Many years ago as I grieved the worst loss I have ever known, someone sent me this prayer handwritten on a card: Father, give me the strength to wait for hope — to look through the window when there are no stars. Even when my joy is gone, give me the strength to stand in the darkest night and say, “Father, the sun still shines.” I will have reached the point of greatest strength once I have learned to wait for hope.
I love the prayer because it acknowledges that unspeakable helplessness of overwhelming loss. It doesn’t promise that good will arise from suffering. Nobody who is that low can even imagine an “after this is over” time. It doesn’t make the suffering my fault for being faithless or weak. It seems to say that hope has its own timing, and it can be expected but not summoned.
Anyway, your sermon, the idea of extremis being the threshold of hope made me think of this.
Nadia,
Your words are like a lightening bolt to my heart. My soul. In a time that I so desperately need it.
I’ve shied away from Christianity for 40 years. I consider myself Buddhist, but ever so often a little light shines in me from your words. Please keep going, as hard as it is right now. Know that you are giving hopeless people hope in a hopeless time.
Hear me when I tell you that you matter. You are making a difference. I am grateful for your offerings.
Peace, love, and light.
I’m so glad I listened and didn’t just read it. Your birthday inflection and facial expressions added so much to the depth of your words. The breast cancer and the anxiety and the Trump voting husband....Just a footnote. Thank you 💜
Grief, anxiety, depression, are all so very real. Of course, joy, happiness and security are real as well. But the former is much more a fabric of 2020 than the latter. All the while we are receiving and giving less human touch than any other times in our lives because of COVID-19.
Smiles are hard to distinguish behind masks. Hands are not being held and hugs are not being given. Our physical and emotional safety nets are thread bare due to quarantines, isolation, and safety measures.
Loved ones are dying alone. Funerals are being cancelled.
Weddings are being postponed. Grandparents are not able to hold their newborn grandchildren.
People in hospitals, nursing homes, residential facilities and yes, even prisons, are not being visited. As such, the isolated are now more alone than ever.
Once gainfully employed people are now unemployed or under employed through no fault of their own.
Many children are unable to spend time with their friends and schoolmates.
Hate is spewing and those of us in marginalized communities are feeling a sense of fear and dread that reminds us of painful times in our lives and makes us fearful of more painful times in the future.
… and while we try in our human mind to tell ourselves this will end one day, (and it will), it is very difficult, if not impossible, to see that from here. The weight of this and so much more on the human heart makes it hard to breathe sometimes.
Today is one of those days for me. Tomorrow will be better, perhaps a touch lighter … but today is heavy. Today is not heavy because I am weak, or crazy, or pessimistic. Today is harder because I am human, and self-care rarely makes it to the top of my list. So, I find myself at a crossroads. I can make self-care a priority or I can swirl the drain until I drown, or things look up (which is not likely to occur before I drown). Both are hard roads. I think I am inclined to go the self-care route … I am not very good at that route … and in truth do not know what that would even look like … but I am going to give it a whirl and pray tomorrow is a brighter, lighter day. I am going to pray that your day is lighter and brighter tomorrow, too.
Thank you for an aha moment. Long ago I was married to an abusive man. Our marriage counselor called him a sociopath. Scary words to hear as a 24 year old. My anxiety has been so high because I know that abusers are most dangerous when their control is threatened or upended. Your words are great reminder of the hope we have. Of the audacity of faith in the spiritual. Of the power of love.
As one who was bullied in Junior High School (AKA now as middle school) and even through high school, I am very grateful for today's post. 40 years after my high school graduation I got up enough nerve to attend my class reunion for the first time. That is when the bullies finally became a footnote. I realized that had still had friends in my class, and that the bullies were only a few of my classmates, not every one of them as I thought. I also found that most of them didn't even remember the bullying that they did.
Now my extreme reaction to the bullies of today makes total sense to me. I will pray for the conversion of my anxiety. Thank you, Nadia.
Bless you, Nadia, for believing in the power of a better, grander story.
Nadia, I want to add to my earlier comment about my anguish, as a Canadian with American family, over the current turmoil in the United States. I have tried in the past week to follow your mother's prayers that you shared with us. I wish I could say, as she did "I'm grateful for my family that loves you and loves each other without the condition of agreeing". I hope and pray that will come to pass. I was overwhelmed by her prayer "Help me not to judge others just because they sin differently than I do," Can I live up to that and still hope that the outgoing President will ultimately be relegated to a constantly diminishing footnote in the long scroll of governance? I need the grace to find a balance.
Thank you, Nadia. Even with the constant, loving support of my church and others with whom I share in faith, my anxiety makes my prayer difficult. Without those supports it would be impossible. I am a Canadian who is in anguish about the situation in the United States, for many reasons. Some of my American relatives are in the thrall of the current President and I cannot talk to them. I am trying to find a common base of love and faith but it is not easy. I ask for prayers of all.
Donald, as to your American relatives who support Trump, sometimes there is no common ground. See https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/11/7/1993905/-No-I-will-not-meet-you-halfway-You-must-change?detail=
EXACTLY!
I keep returning to "The World Is Very Dangerous" message from an obscure collection of Rabbi Carol Meyers sermons called "Leaning on God" (50 cents in a library book sale, nice).
Shechinah is what she calls it. re "Shechinah, the in-dwelling presence of God, is all around us, all the time, if we could only train ourselves to perceive it; to be constantly aware. Moreover, we have the power to embody the Shechinah , in the acts we choose to do, in the words we say, in our ability to connect with other human beings and to recognize God in them. All around us is Shechinah" It has and does and will always give us the courage to cope. Hitler, smallpox 'Nam, Nixon, cancer, Katrina, HIV-AIDS, 9-11, Columbine, COVID, Trump and whatever comes next.
Always all around us is Shechinah always the courage to cope. I like that idea.
(sorry to babble on so)
I used to have a lot of anxiety around the word revival and the various forms of the word, but I think I have a new relationship with it today. Thank you for reviving this sermon; the word revive and many others in it revived me today. Your delivery had something to do with it, too. ;-)
This is so awesome! I wish I could speak like you do to my teenage daughter when she is going through her crap. You are beacon of light! :)
desde Argentina gracias. es un mensaje lleno de claridad y esperanzador de nuestras propias fuerzas. gracias¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡
This! This right here--And thus, my subscription, immediately! Thank you pastor.
Oh ma’am, I hope you are doing ok. You just made my chest warm and my eyes tear up. I’m going to make it through today. Thank you (again) Nadia
Footnotes versus legacy. Today, for a few minutes, I got to reconnect with my high school forensics coach - me from Seoul, South Korea, and my coach in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. It was only for a few minutes on a phone call. I haven't seen her in decades. One of her biggest worries is about Trump. I told her that someday Trump will be a footnote and his actions will be reversed, but that her legacy will live on and will spread around the world in me and in those that I teach and coach and in those that they teach.... Teachers and coaches and your sermon give me hope today.