Disciples, Apostles, and Saints!
Looking at this past week, it would be easy to get tangled up in the anxiety we no doubt find in the church. Then, of course, we glance out and see the troubles of the weeks before: the murder of school children in Texas and black elders in Pennsylvania. And then our minds get pulled to Ukraine, the pandemic, and all of the events that seem to be pulling us all apart at the seems. And we think, well, of course we’re losing our minds!
The constant in all that we are experiencing: with its confusion, pain, and sense of division: is that we feel like we are at a loss to figure out how to be together. How to live with one another. It is at once both obvious and bedeviling.
And yet, what is politics but the attempt to find order? It is the attempt of a people to figure out how to be a WE. Together.
It seems natural, then, that the impulse to be an I doesn’t go away. But an I doesn’t fully understand how to be a WE without a little bit of help. And some of that comes from a system. Rules. Boundaries. Expectations. And some of it comes from another I who can point us in the right direction.
But most often, how WE can handle a thing, comes from WE striving to make it work together.
If WE have a problem of gun violence then WE can solve it. There is no way one single I can handle it. No single party. And no single “good guy”. It is a WE thing and all of us need to pull our weight.
With love,
Drew