by Rev. Dr. George Mason
“You ask me how my work is going? … The current’s got me. … I just keep at it. I just keep hoping the tide will turn and bring me in.”
That’s how the painter Paul Glenn answered the question from writer Annie Dillard. Paul told her the story of his neighbor Ferrar Burn, who lived near Paul in the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington State. One evening Ferrar looked out into the channel off his beach at Fishery Point and spotted a prized yellow Alaska cedar log that must have fallen off a logging barge and was drifting in the water. He jumped in his skiff and rowed out to it, hoping to scavenge it for use in home repair. He caught up with it, tied it onto the stern of his little boat, and started rowing back. Suddenly, he felt the tide go out and he realized he was now being pulled away from home toward the open waters.
Ferrar rowed against the tide … all through the evening hours. He might as well have been tied to a whale as to that 8-foot log. The best he could do was hold his position just enough to wait out the tide and prevent being carried off to sea. Finally, about three o’clock in the morning, he felt the tide go slack. The current had reversed. It was with him now. He kept rowing for home and finally arrived at his beach about nine o’clock in the morning to his awaiting wife, who had wondered all night what had become of him. He dragged the log ashore, no worse for the wear, save for a little backache (Dillard, Annie, The Writing Life, New York: HarperPerennial, 1989, pp.85-88.).
That’s how it feels to many of us right now. We entered the public fray with the intent to save or defend those who had been lost or discarded by society. We attached ourselves to them and worked on their behalf. But the tide turned against us. And now it may feel as if we are being dragged off to sea for good, far from the place we called home. It would be easy to get discouraged and give up. But too much is at stake. We have to keep pulling toward our destination.
The prophets of Israel never spoke up or acted out for justice and mercy during times when they would be heeded or honored for their courage. In the moment, they were vilified as being unpatriotic, royal nuisances and killjoy moralists. It was only much later that their words were seen as divine truths and preserved in the canon of Scripture for future generations to take as wisdom to be followed.
We don’t do our spiritual work of activism or advocacy by calculating the odds of success. We do it because it is right, because there is a fire in our belly that burns for justice, that hates cruelty, that yearns for a world in which every human life is valued and none is harmed. We do it because we feel called to do it.
Right now, many are writing, posting, or podcasting about what is needed in this moment when the tide is against us. Some counsel self-care, reminding us of the salience of mindfulness and the soulfulness of silence. Be still, and know that I am God, the psalmist says (46:10). And that stillness can lead to calmness as we remember that we are not on our own in these efforts.
Prayer, meditation, devotional reading, yoga: these can all aid in acknowledging the unwelcome change that may be necessary to our growth. Acknowledgment is not resignation. We name what is, so that we can move through it productively. As a friend told me recently, the goal in times like these is to move from anxiety to sadness. Anxiety immobilizes because it comes from fear; sadness mobilizes because it is rooted in love.
Like Ferrar Burn, when the tide turns against us, the need to wait patiently for change doesn’t make us drop our oars, it makes us bow our back for a long night of rowing. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche coined the phrase “a long obedience in the same direction,” by which he meant that all growth and achievement comes by disciplined persistence through hardship over time.
Contemplation and action are the yin and yang of progress. And this tension, this push and pull, can bring true joy. When we reject the false dichotomy of “winners” and “losers,” we are able to find joy in things like the beauty of creation or the goodness of our colleagues. We may feel victorious when our policy priorities prevail, but that is not the same thing as joy. Joy is the product of striving with others for God’s good purposes, as we understand them.
At Faith Commons we acknowledge what is, while never losing faith in the joy and the promise of what can be. We hope you will join us along the way in this season of striving until “faithfulness and truth meet, [and] justice and well-being kiss” (Psalm 85:11, Tanakh translation).