Sabbath Devotional :: Learn, Love, Act
During this time of COVID, our empty nest has expanded with four other people in the house since March — a baby and a three-year-old and their parents who both have full time jobs in DC. Our son and daughter-in-law manage their careers remotely from our place in the West, and we all spend segments of the day with the littles. We are all healthy. All things considered, for the worst of times, this is the best of times.
Despite the lovely landmarks like first teeth, learning to count to 100, and Sunday home church when we share the sacrament, I admit that I still feel unsettled, unfocused, subpar, and exhausted. It didn’t help recently when my car and my computer gave out on me.
I am learning a lot. I am learning to accept myself in the messy condition I’m in. That’s not to say I’m thrilled about it. That’s not to say I expect to live like this forever. I know that “striving” to be more put-together than I actually am typically sets me back rather than encourages me. How ‘bout you?
I have never been an advocate of the “Everything happens for a reason” mentality. I don’t believe in a God who would slaughter millions of people through the vector of a virus for an inscrutable “reason”. I don’t believe that the grievous injustices of slavery, racism, and sexism have scarred and sacrificed lives for centuries because God had a “reason” for it. God didn’t give my husband a rare, nearly fatal cancer “for a reason.” A loving God — the only kind I believe in — does not orchestrate rape or suffering or torture of innocents “for a reason.”
Choices have consequences and some consequences can fester, distort and ossify over time without intervention and healing from divine sources and human hands.
My view is that we were all invited to leap into the bubbling pot of “Mortality Stew.” There are all sorts of ingredients — tasty spices and wonderful aromas, chunks of root vegetables, tender herbs and even gnarled bones and pig knuckles. We knew going into this that we might keep bumping into tough stuff and not always float on buoyant basil leaves. Mortality stew is the opposite of Morality Stew. Our task is not to find reason for why we sometimes get clobbered with gristle and gobbets. These things happen. It’s what we learn and what choices we make and actions we take because of what we experience — both the “good” and the “bad.”
Quickly, before the weaknesses of that metaphor reveal themselves and boil over, let’s consider what fundamental questions God hopes we will consider in our lives.
I once heard the story of a woman who had come back from a “near death” experience. She said of her time on the other side that there are two questions we as mortals should focus on: 1) What did you learn? And 2) How well did you love? Those are juicy questions springing from the heart of the Gospel. And they are inextricably intertwined.
Have you noticed that I haven’t yet said a thing about our political situation?
With the grim glaze of the pandemic added to the past fraught four years, are those two questions still relevant? What have we learned? How well did we love?
Yes. Now more than ever. This is the way of peacemaking. This is the Savior’s way — the way of learning, love and action.
What are YOU learning during this time of massive friction and anxiety on every front? Border separations were not God’s plan for families, but those separations have and still occur. How and what can we learn? From what sources? How can our learning move us to action? And — most importantly (and a wise antidote to the anger these outrages may spark) how can we infuse our actions with love?
The same can be asked about foreign influence in elections; privileged corruption; cronyism; fraud; lying; . . . the list is long.
Learn. Love. Act.
To support our efforts in this vigorous challenge, here are some words of encouragement I heard this past week:
“We will choose hope over fear, facts over fiction, fairness over privilege.”
“This is not a partisan moment. This must be an American moment. It’s a moment that calls for hope and light and love. Hope for our future. Light to see our way forward. And love for one another.”
“America isn’t just a collection of clashing interests, of red states or blue states. We’re so much bigger than that. We’re so much better than that.”
“We can choose a path of becoming angrier, less hopeful, more divided. A path of shadow and suspicion. Or, or we can choose a different path and together take this chance to heal, to reform, to unite, a path of hope and light.”
“[L]ove is more powerful than hate. Hope is more powerful than fear. And light is more powerful than dark.”[1]
“Years from now, this moment will have passed. And our children and our grandchildren will look in our eyes and ask us: Where were you when the stakes were so high? They will ask us, what was it like? And we will tell them. We will tell them, not just how we felt. We will tell them what we did.”[2]
Perhaps we will hear other unifying words this coming week.
One can hope.
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Linda Hoffman Kimball is a founding member of Mormon Women for Ethical Government.
