the wisdom of despair

the first lesson is simple.

we are not in control

we can plan.

we can pray.

we can work hard.

but none of us is in charge.

it doesn't matter whether you believe in god or mother nature. 
no one is exempt from tragedy.

and not just from natural disasters..

we manage to create tragedies on our own.

despair teaches us that tragedy is no respecter of persons. 

fires and hurricanes and earthquakes don't pick which neighborhoods to destroy.

bullets often miss their targets,

but don't miss.

 or they do hit their targets

what happens after a tragedy depends on ourselves, but even more importantly on others who help.

there comes a time when we all need help.

who gets it and who gives it makes all the difference in the world.

in my hometown, port st. joe, we have been given tremendous help. food and water and clothes and toy donations have come from all over the country.

in puerto rico, people were abandoned to fend for themselves.

i only had a foot and a half of flooding in my house and it's taken six weeks to get out the furniture and clean the floors... and it still needs work.

despair teaches us that how others treat us is everything.




when despair is our companion, we are not strong.

when despair is our companion, we listen to what others say and how they treat us.

our strength comes from our community.

without community, there is little strength

in the story of the good samaritan, despair teaches us that we are the man on the road. 

we are the one in need.

we are the one seeking help. 

we are the one finding that our community may not look like what we thought it did. that person reaching out to us may be a liberal, may be a conservative, may be an evangelical, may be an atheist.

all we see is the help that we so desperately need.

everyone does despair differently, but with things in common.

platitudes don't help.

well-meaning testimonies of how blessed someone is leaves the one whose house was destroyed thinking, well god didn't bless me. 

does god love the person whose house was spared more than the one whose house is gone?

these are questions that despair asks.

despair teaches us how fragile we are.

how fragile our world is.

despair teaches us that we can be grateful and sad at the same time. despair teaches us that we know it could be worse, but that doesn't lessen our grief.

it helps. it does. 

but despair does not leave us because of our gratitude.

gratitude only provides us with something to hold on to.

despair tests our faith.

it asks us what we believe.

it gives us the time to discover what is deep within us.

and also what is around us.

the greatest lesson of despair is knowing how important are those around us.

the greatest lesson is the need for hope and how necessary it is that hope comes from without as well as within.

we were not created to be loners.

we were created for community.

we reach within our own experience with despair and take that knowledge into service.

we don't have to learn the lessons of despair.

we can respond with rage.

we can make our home there.

but if we listen to our hearts

if we hear the cries of our neighbors, and know that everyone is our neighbor....

then we have found wisdom in despair.