A few months ago I hosted a Zoom happy hour for some far-flung clergy friends—a revived practice from Covidtide, newly salient as we figure out how to be both prophetic and pastoral, hopeful and grounded, amid the constant chaos of our political moment. We checked in about how our people were doing, loved ones and parishioners alike.
One friend made an offhand comment that stuck with me: “Yeah, some of my folks are pretty ‘hair on fire’ right now . . . though interestingly, they’re often not the ones most directly affected by what’s going on.”
I followed up with my friend later, wanting to hear more. She reminded me of that old phrase, “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” People who are just trying to survive, she mused, don’t often have the mental bandwidth to let themselves pause and wallow in how awful things really are. In those situations, we have to protect our sanity and our hearts, controlling what we can control and letting other stuff go.
