Despairing Beauty

The past couple of days, a lot has happened in our world, our city, and even in our Yearly Meeting, and sadly much of it deals with death. It has been hard receiving the news about the flooding in Texas and hearing of all the unexpected loss of life. When visiting Alex over Christmas, we spent time in this beautiful area and cannot believe all the pain it is enduring, currently. Waking up on July 6, the first news I heard was that our own city of Indianapolis endured another mass shooting where youth were left dead after celebrating their independence. Before the 4th of July deadline, a bill was passed in our government that will now take healthcare away from millions of people and will clearly lead to more death. Even on our last morning at Western Yearly Meeting annual sessions, our Associate Superintendent, Tom Rockwell, decided to change up what he planned to share and spoke openly on the realities facing the future of Friends. A part of that presentation was the “death” of 24% of Quaker Meetings who closed from 2010 to 2020, and the grim future of Quakers in our world. (Check out Tom’s article in Friends Journal HERE). 

After three days of death, I found myself on Saturday morning with only one word on my heart: despair – the complete loss or absence of hope. As a pastor, I am not supposed to despair. I have been trained to help people process, to look for the Light, to have faith that the Divine has a plan or purpose. I will be honest, that is extremely hard right now, probably because I am human, as well. When I struggle with the pain of the world, I have learned not to take it on all by myself.  I need to tap people who have been through despair and pain and seek their wisdom for our current times. One of the places I have sought wisdom for several years now, is in the Black community and Black Liberation Theology. Often for the Black community hope has risen out of deep despair, hardship, and pain.  

As I paused this weekend to ponder the despair in my heart, I came across the words of NYT Bestselling author of Black Liturgies and This Here Flesh and renowned poet, Cole Arthur Rilely.  She was asking a query that spoke to my condition, “How Will You Resist the Tide of Despair?”  This was her poetic response: 

In a time when we have more access than ever

before to the traumas of this world, 

how will you resist the tide of despair? 

Let beauty be your anchor. 

If you find the lake view too bright, 

bring your gaze closer,  

perhaps all the way to your own flesh and blood. 

Life is monstrous on the threshold of apocalypse. 

The practice of beholding, 

this fidelity to beauty in all things, 

I’ve come to believe, 

is no small form of salvation. 

(Black Liturgies, p. 33) 

In my despair of the world’s pain, I am trying hard to bring my gaze closer and make beauty my anchor.  There is beauty in all things, if we are willing to open our eyes to see it.  And let’s be honest, when we seek the beauty, the despair does not seem so bad.  Ask yourself today: What beauty do I see around me amid my despair? How is it giving me hope? 

(This first appeared in As Way Opens in the Indianapolis First Friends, Friend to Friend newsletter.)