Sometimes when I get to the beach it is pristine - just sand and waves. Not today. Today it is strewn with kelp, grasses, a couple of dead seagulls, plastic bottle caps, candy wrappers, and who knows what else. And if you look out in the water, you will see more stuff being washed ashore.
Life feels kind of like the beach today. The crises are piling up, things that have been floating along are crashing ashore, making a tangled mess. The pandemic, racism and its ugly consequences, politics and religion, climate change, gun violence, not to mention murder hornets and shark attacks.
Feeling overwhelmed? This beach is too big and too littered for one person to clean up alone. It can be paralyzing to look around. Our reaction may simply be to go back inside our houses - those of us who are privileged enough to be able to do that. which is everyone who will read this. Out of sight, out of mind.
Please don’t. Because the mess won’t go away by itself. The people whose lives are caught in those tangled tendrils - people whose lives are every bit as important and sacred as ours - cannot, and must not be expected to, fix it themselves. It will take all of us to clear this beach, to make it clean enough so all may enjoy it.
Pick one thing. As you absorb the news, think prayerfully about where your energy lies. Over what are you most outraged? About what do you feel most uninformed? Who do you know who might join you in taking up some work? The work can take many forms - reading and discussing a book that challenges you, or researching and donating to organizations that already are doing some of the work, or going out to protest, or having a hard conversation with a friend, or writing letters to elected officials, or working to elect people who will work for change.
Pick one issue. Do one thing. See how it feels. That will inform your next thing. And so on. We can’t clear the beach alone, or in one day. But working together, over time, the mess will lessen. Stuff will still wash ashore, but we will already be in the habit of cleaning it up. Together.