Pinnacle member Phil Branson sent me some words the great reformer Martin Luther sent to John Hess during the time of the Plague in Europe. Pointed enough for our moment that I think to share more widely.
From Luther to Hess:
I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance inflict and pollute others and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others. If my neighbor needs me however I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely as stated above. See this is such a God-fearing faith because it is neither brash nor foolhardy and does not tempt God.
~ Luther's Works, Volume 43 p. 132, as "Whether one may flee from a Deadly Plague,"
Pray. Act. Or to paraphrase the now familiar recommendation from Jacques Ellull, to "think globally, act locally," we should follow Luther in days like this and "pray globally, act locally." For sure.
But what is our action? We "fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine and take it," as Luther says. Or in our context we clean (everything), connect (without touch), cover (what we can), care (for the vulnerable, sick, or afraid), and calm (ourselves and each other). And we also create—new ways of being together, reaching out, and making community.
Ok. All good. But still. It's an odd time, especially when the normal ways we respond to tragedy, crisis, or challenge—which is to come together—is the very thing we can't do. So we rely on technology to approximate our desire to connect. It's a blessing for sure, for who knows how we'd have been handling these days even 30 years ago? But let's not assume that technology is enough to get us through. Zoom, live-streaming, phone calls, texts, home delivery, Amazon Prime, Google Hangouts, Netflix, YouTube and more will help. But they basically keep us doing what we're doing, with new twists.
Isn't this also a time when we might find new things? Things we didn't even know we had in us, or maybe had forgotten?
Even while learning new technologies of community, let's set the tools aside now and then and take time to discover things that aren't mediated by screens. Let's let a little silence in. Let's let space between us get filled with love among us—praying for people you'd long forgotten, writing in a journal to remember your own spirit, asking questions (ok, even online) about places in the world and people in other lands you thought little about before these days, learning about how the economy can work even when the economy doesn't work. E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful might fall off your dusty bookshelf from those college years and ask to be read. Mary Oliver's poetry might do the same, or Emily Dickinson's. Or maybe the Bible!
And maybe, just maybe, when you go online for that Zoom meeting, or that online study group, or that live-streamed worship or class you'll bring something in you to that experience that you had forgotten.
Consider this, from C. S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain.
The settled happiness and security which we all desire,
God withholds from us by the very nature of the world:
but joy, pleasure, and merriment, he has scattered broadcast.
We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy.
It is not hard to see why.
The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world
and oppose an obstacle to our return to God:
a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony,
a merry meeting with our friends, a bath
or a football match, have no such tendency.
Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns,
but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.
