Bleeding Edge

I am going to be blunt with you because if we all live a little longer — we will celebrate life together, and if not, then curtains it is.

Yet, because I’m mostly optimistic about our future even as we face headwinds that might scupper our chances for a reprieve from this awful malaise we are traipsing through right now — I hope and pray for us.

Having said that — I must admit that I am also moderately optimistic about our Peace, because the prospects of a stalemate victory in the war in Ukraine right now are not so good.

After all the carnage and the bloodshed — we are drawing to an end by default.

Think of it…

God, what a world.

What a heartbreak.

What a bloody freak show this has been.

Years of crises and hurt, and we are all still here moaning about tomorrow.

This is completely ruining all of our carefully crafted plans.

We are bereft of hope, and since I was going to celebrate our Age of Peace at the end of the pandemic through the grace of God, and that had given me the perspective that almost everything sorts itself out in the end.

But now all that is upended.

Because at the tail end of the pandemic — Ukraine erupted upon us when the war started, and although I was hoping that good will, decency, charity and love always conspire to bring light into the darkest corners, eventually that proved to be a bridge too far.

Then again for a moment in time, the coming of the crucifixion of Jesus, seemed like a big win for the Romans, and so seems the crucifixion of Ukraine, a temporal victory for Russia.

But like everything else — all is not what it seems to be. Same as humans who forget that turning older, maturer and wiser, not only means that you weren’t born yesterday and you’ve lived through hell and hight water, but it also means that you’ve seen all the horrors of war, all the awfulness of man, you’ve seen dear friends literally ravaged by cancer, you’ve lost children, you’ve Mother and Lover, and you still live on, shaken to the core in a series of unspeakable losses. I’ve even suffered assassination attempts that went unpunished, my dog died, my love is gone…

Really, to not just use theological terms — God Help Me because it is just too frigging much.

And by now, regrettably, I am seriously uninterested in a vigorous debate about the existence of God or evil, or even a pep talk.

So where does that leave me?

Glad you asked, because the answer is simple.

A few very best friends with whom you can share your truth. That’s the main thing. By now, you know that the whole system of our lives works because we are not all nuts on the same day.

You call someone and tell them that you hate everyone and all of life, and they will be glad you called.

They felt that way three days ago and you helped them pull out of it by making them laugh over a cup of tea. You took them for a walk, and laughed together.

Also, besides our friends, getting outside and looking up and around changes us: remember, you can trap bees on the bottom of Mason jars with a bit of honey and without a lid, because they don’t look up. They just walk around bitterly bumping into the glass walls. That is all of us.

All we have to do is look up and fly away. So we look up. In all of my years on this earth — I have never seen a boring sky. I have never felt blasé about the moon, the birdsong, or white pages needing to be filled with my writing.

This spring it is a crazy drunken world having a fiesta just outside our windows now, and its almost too much beauty and renewal to take in.

The world is warming up.

Well, how does appreciating spring can help the people of Ukraine?

If we believe in chaos theory, and the butterfly effect, that the flapping of a Monarch’s wings near my home can lead to a weather change in Tokyo, then maybe noticing beauty — flapping our wings with amazement, changes everything in ways we cannot even begin to imagine.

It means goodness is quantum.

Even to help the small world helps.

Even prayer, which seems to do nothing — means everything to the world at large.

And because everything is connected — we are here together now.

But quantum is perhaps a little esoteric in our current condition. Well, mine: I’m sure you’re just fine, because I think infinitely less esoteric stuff now, but much more abstract.

Probably best to have both feet on the ground, ogle the daffodils, take a sack of canned good over to the food pantry, and pick up trash, because this helps our insides enormously.

This next Sunday I will celebrate the absolutely astonishing miracle that I was even born. As Fredrick Buechner wrote, “The grace of God means something like, Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you.”

I will celebrate that I have shelter a family, and good friends and I can have warm socks because I’ve got feet to put into them, and that God found a way to turn the madness, the pain, the loss — all into Grace.

So come Sunday — I’ll shake my head with wonder, which I do more and more as I age, and look bright eyed at all the beauty that is left in this world, and all that still works, after so much has been taken away.

Yours,

Dr Churchill

PS:

So celebrate life with me now.

Step outside and let your mouth drop open looking at the beauty.

Feed the poor with me, locally or, if you want to buy me something, please make a donation to UNICEF instead.

Do this and I will invite you to my party because it will not be the same without you.

So,

“Close your eyes, fall in love, and stay there.”

–Rumi