How to sustain your faith when anger, hardship and COVID bring you down
The last part of 2021 will be known as the year of cancellation. Here we are on the precipice of 2022, ushering in a new year, but all we see is the cancellation of everything.
Professional sports and college bowl games, airline flights, cruises, vital surgeries, even religious services fall victim to the Omicron COVID19 virus.
Imagine that now we are all stranded somewhere, in any of these situations. Maybe right now is an opportune time to reflect about how we have handled 2021’s chaos. What are some of the hard lessons learned?
The election of a new president, the upsurge of the delta and omicron variants of COVID-19, the insurrection against Congress, the Afghanistan withdrawal, voting rights restrictions and runaway inflation, just to name a few of 2021’s major events.
We read stories about physicians and nurses — and clergy, too — who resigned their positions because they are out of patience and, frankly, burned out. That is probably true for a lot of workers these days.
Where do we go from here? How do we sustain our faith when over 800,000 Americans have perished from COVID-19? How do we stand up for decency and reconciliation rather than revenge in the spheres of influence we all inhabit? How do we eradicate anger, no matter what side of the political spectrum, that threatens to overtake our good judgment during these turbulent times?
Rabbi Chaim Stern, of blessed memory, answered this question long ago when he wrote a prayer that summarizes the great spiritual work in front of us. “May I be among those who are hard to provoke and easy to appease. May I be a friend of peace at home and at work, and everywhere I go. When I am angry let me reflect whether my anger is proportionate to its cause and appropriate in its expression. May I strive at all times to keep to keep from adding to the world’s woes.”
The Torah has given us examples of how biblical figures rose above their emotions, rejected the cancel culture ideal and found reconciliation rather than descending into violence. Remember when Jacob dies, and his sons are frightened, realizing that now their brother Joseph can take his revenge? What does Joseph say to them?
“Fear not; for am I in the place of God? But as for you, you thought evil against me; but God meant it for good to bring to pass, as it is this day to save the people” (Genesis 50:19).
In the earlier story of Jacob’s encounter with his estranged brother, Esau, one may have anticipated Esau taking revenge because his brother tricked him out of the patriarchal blessing and his birthright from their father, Isaac. What happens? Instead of violence, they face each other and exchange gifts in a respectful encounter and move on with their lives.
This next year needs to be the time we call from deep inside ourselves the restraint and wisdom to ascend to the moral high ground.
The prophetic writings in the Bible remind us today of how a nation can implode as much from the enemy within as from a foreign aggressor. The prophets accused ancient Israel of rejecting the words of God and said that would lead to national annihilation at the hands of the Babylonians and, centuries later, the Romans.
History bears witness to the occasions when a ruler or a religious cleric did not listen to their sacred teachings but, in the name of those same doctrines they supposedly cherished, wreaked havoc and trampled over their own values. Just review the history of the Crusades in Europe.
That kind of chaos could happen to us in America, and then, God help us! Many tell me that kind of tone deafness and refusal to listen and communicate respectfully with each other has infected our nation like a pathogen of the soul.
NASA just launched the James Webb space telescope, the most powerful telescope in the world, which has embarked upon a glorious space mission to search out the early history of the universe.
For this year, I wish we could also launch on earth a most powerful mirror that everyone would have to look into and see themselves. What would we learn about how these recent events have affected our spirit and our loyalty to the nation we live in? How have these events affected our relationships with our neighbors and with God, the source of all humanity?
Based upon the prayer of Rabbi Stern, my hope is that we will listen to the conscience and reject the anger that percolates in contemporary America. Can we rise above the anger and avoid exacerbating the hardship of our fellow citizens?
Is it time to stop pushing the cancel button on so much that we do and believe? May our prayers move us to compassion and diminish the heartache and anguish that afflict many in our country. Let 2022 be the year of blessing for us all.