Dire Days Won't Win

Doomscrolling is hard on the soul. I know, “go outside and touch grass.” Thing is, where I live, there’s a layer of hard-packed snow between my fingertips and those hidden blades beneath the ice. Bitter cold blowing down into the spaces between my bones sure does make a cozy nest indoors appealing. So, a nice pile of pillows, a blanket, sweatpants, and a massively oversized hoodie are just what I need, and as much as I’d love to have my old dog rest his head on my leg, he gets too hot to stay close for long. His snores from the other side of the room, though, assure the household that all is well, at least on this tiny scale.

I don’t know if y’all experience this, but I’m having a time of it navigating how much energy to spend fretting and how much to spend living. It’s that classic dilemma, choosing between feeling overwhelmed by knowing too much or feeling guilty for turning my attention away. The stakes are getting higher, so both the responsibility and the emotions are harder to carry. It’s taking more of us to carry all that, but thank God, more of us seem to be arriving by the day.

Today was a full day. It started with too much coffee and too much time reading the news. I shoveled snow, filled out some paperwork, and got to work planning my Lenten class on “Joy as Resistance.” I read the news some more (The only way I can keep up is by reading chunks throughout the day; there’s just soooooo much.), had at least three conversations where a pastoral need could be fixed at the drop of a hat if only people had enough money, and took a much needed nap. I slept for three hours, which I haven’t had to (or gotten to) do in a very long. And then I took a peek at the international news, and the international news drove me to my keyboard. Hi, here we are.

I don’t have a magic wand or a secret prayer to make this all okay. I guess I just felt the need to send a “chin up, friends” into the ether. The air itself feels dire some days, especially these days. But you’re not alone in feeling that, and you’re not alone in wanting to fix what’s broken in this world so that dire days stay away. I believe things are going to turn out okay. That doesn’t mean nothing bad will happen; it just means I believe somewhere, on the other side of all this, there’s a future where it isn’t so hard for so many to do something as simple as live. That old arc of history bending toward justice might need us to lean on it a bit to get there, but I believe we’re up to the task. Chin up, friends. We’re going to be okay.