What does it mean to be dressed for action and to have our lamps lit?
In an anxious age, this bit of Jesus’ teaching is one that really has sell potential, doesn’t it? Taken out of context, it might be a marketing tag line of the sort that has commercial success because it meets our own anxiety and affirms us in it: you have reason to be on edge, so make sure you’re ready, that you’re prepared for the worst you can imagine.
And who doesn’t want a place of security? The more we are attuned to what is going on in the world around us, to the poverty and human suffering on this street corner and others, in Sudan, and in Gaza, the more our hearts are bound to break, to be vulnerable to the suffering that is compassion (compassion literally means suffering-with). The fact of the matter is that we whose hearts are open to the world are vulnerable to experiencing vicarious trauma on a daily basis just taking in the news; even moreso when news from a distance resonates in specific ways in our own lives, if we have ever been in a war, faced food or housing insecurity or experienced race or gender based hatred.
We cannot look away, and our impotence to do anything that truly will help to reverse the suffering leaves us it seems with only the usual trauma responses at hand. We might turn to fight – to stoke our rage at the causes of the injustice. But fighting demands that there is someone right in front of us to fight against. I’ve caught myself a few times lately being argumentative with colleagues for no reason other than having pent up anger, frustration, and rage that needs some object more close at hand than are the far-removed-from-me warmongers and the powers and principalities of genocide.
We might try flight – to run away from the reality, or to hide away from the pain with whatever distractions and soothing addictions are our usual ways of coping with trouble. But flight only numbs us not just to the realities outside of ourselves, but it also only clamps a lid on our own pain in ways that mask it; running away from the realities of pain and suffering in the world and in our own hearts and minds and souls and bodies in the end only leaves us in a post-marathon-like state of exhaustion and does more harm.
Those are two well known trauma responses. Another is to freeze, to become locked in, shutting down our senses, unable to take in anything more of suffering, and freezing our capacity to take anything in. It struck me one day in Strasbourg week before last. I stood in front of a beautiful Madonna and plump infant Jesus and was overwhelmed with a vision that superimposed on top of the pink and blue robed Mary the black dress and hijab of a Palestinian mother too dehydrated for tears, cradling her starving child. That wasn’t the point of freeze, though. Far from it. I found myself warmly welling up with tears and weeping liberally in the art gallery. No, the freeze came when I stepped from the museum out to the public square and came face to face with someone right in front of me lying on the sidewalk and asking for money. I froze. I couldn’t take it in. It was too much. The suffering of the world is too much. I realized in that moment of freeze that the fear that had gripped me was the fear that I couldn’t do anything beyond tossing a few euro his way, and that wasn’t going to be much real help. The fear that froze me was the fear that leads to despair; the freeze I felt was the beginning of callousness – an attempt just to shut out the world if I can’t fix it.
I found myself asking: what am I trying to fix, though? My own discomfort? My own pain in witnessing the pain of others? That little confrontation with myself helped me to melt, a bit, but the freeze was real.
A fourth trauma response can be seen I think in today’s reading from the Prophet Isaiah, Chapter 1. Right at the beginning we hear God’s voice thundering with anger. “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?… I have had enough to burnt offerings… bring me no more!… solemn assemblies and incense – get rid of them!” The message is rather clear: the people have turned away from God’s ways of justice and care for the vulnerable, from hospitality and mercy and lovingkindness. Now, finding themselves under threat from the advancing armies of the Assyrian King, they have been reaching out to God with offering upon offering, fawning, as it were, for the right sort of attention from God, deliverance from whatever it is that ails them in anxiety or insecurities of all sorts. But their hands are full of the blood of responsibility for the sufferings of others, through their selfish greed.
Fawning to power is another trauma response. You see it in sycophants who attach themselves to dictators, sacrificing their own integrity on the altar of promised power just like the leader. You see it in enslaved people who collude with those in power in the hopes of just a bit more bread. It’s complicated, but it’s essentially a cozying up to someone with power in the hopes of being rescued. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah, having forgotten that their God is a God who demands justice and rescue for the oppressed and mercy and kindness and generosity towards strangers and all who are vulnerable, have projected instead a God whose most important attributes are that this God can be appeased by their offerings, can be manipulated by their frequent intercessions and sacrifices, into doing what they need God to do, to alleviate their guilt, or to vanquish their enemies. You see, even liturgy can become a sort of fawning exercise if we have the wrong God as the object of our worship.
Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, a whole bunch of ways in which we may be inclined to deal with the traumas of our own lives, and with those we witness in vivid sound and colour. Each of these is a normal human response that helps us to feel some sort of control and agency when confronted with the shock of having no control and no agency over what is going on. Underneath, above, and through each of these normal human responses we have another set of paths before us, on a way that is the life of faith.
Just as our bodies and minds and souls are gifts of the Creator God, faith, too, is a gift from God. To accept the gift of faith is to enter into a relationship of trust that the God who is the Creator of the universe is revealed through this creation and in encounter with human beings throughout the ages as a God of loving compassion, a God who is always very nearby to us, seeking justice and peace for all of creation.
To accept this and so much more goodness from God is to accept our place in God’s story as those who are called to live in this life of faith. The unfailing treasure in heaven, “here no thief comes and no moth destroys” become the treasures of our own lives lived following the ways of God. To be dressed for action and having our lamps lit might look something like practising the values of God’s reign, rehearsing the kingdom of God, it might even look something like what we do Sunday by Sunday in our eucharistic liturgy, or every morning or evening in our daily prayers. We practice what it is to receive God’s gifts, and we practice what is the only truly faithful response: gratitude to God that we show through our lives.
Rehearsing, speaking again, learning by heart and mind and soul the ways of God that call us into abundant life in right relationship with all of creation including our human siblings as we raise our thanksgivings to God: these are the ways that grow a life in faith and faith in the God of life.
The life of faith does not provide an easy antidote to our very real and complex trauma responses as some sort of solution. But in faith we know that God is walking alongside us, and we can turn to our God as our companion. Like psalmists and others before us we may find with God a safe place to turn our fighting rages at injustice into the nutrient-rich tears of lament that grow our hearts even as they are breaking from images of starving children. Trusting that our companion God has been through it all in human experience and even more than we can imaging, and knows what pains we are carrying, we may find a comforting and understanding holy presence in which we can shed our flights away into dependency on whatever numbs us to the pain of the world and of our own hearts, and might melt what freezes us from compassion.
Knowing that God is beyond our attempts to make God an object controllable by our fawning attempts to win favour and power may just help to engage in us all a deeper sense of our absolute dependence on God, and offer the only acceptable sacrifices: our contrition, our gratitude, and our faithful living in God’s ways of justice, peace, and right relationship.
And, my friends, we will not solve all of the problems and heal all of the suffering that we are witness to each day, but we will have put some more of God’s love into the world in ways that do bring healing and good news to the world around us. To trust that this is true is a big part of the life of faith; to take time to really pay attention to the ways that it is true in even little ways in our lives is the beginning of very deep prayer. And that is an offering acceptable to God.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.