There’s an ongoing argument in my marriage. My husband complains about something, and then I complain about his complaining. This is no small conflict. What it comes down to is that he gets very irritated when the world doesn’t work as it should, and I get very irritated when he tells me about things I can’t fix anyway.
It’s tempting to stay out of situations that are so messed up my efforts to help would hardly register on the grand scale. How does one person save an entire country of hungry children? How do I approach issues of war and poverty, corruption and dislocation? Why even try?
I do believe that biblical justice and mercy call for Christians getting involved in making large systems work better. We need to speak up for the poor caught in the crossfire of warring armies. We need to protest the injustice of dangerous working conditions and insufficient resources for food and medical care—here at home and all over the world. God is all about helping the “alien, orphan, and widow.”
But God also wants me—individual, limited me—to do what I can in this situation today. God wants me to walk out into the day and speak as best I can and help this person or listen to that person. Maybe I help someone get lunch, even though I know that this will not feed her long-term or change the fact that a violent boyfriend has rendered her homeless. But it matters, this one thing I do.
I figured out some time ago that I tend to avoid people in need because I know that, 90 percent of the time, I can’t change their situations. Sort of like my wanting to cut off my husband’s comments about a bad day because I am powerless to make the phone company more service-friendly and efficient.
Love does what it can. When God adds grace to that, good things happen. Sometimes the good is only for now, for the time being. Other times, our little acts build up like stones in a river that eventually alter its course.
Be inspired about doing what you can by reading the excerpt in the sample found on the right from Gary Smith’s They Come Back Singing: “Cause of Death: Life” and “Yayo” (pages 47-49, 90-93). If you’re reading this via e-mail please visit Deepening Friendship to view the excerpt.
Here’s an exercise:
Identify an area in which the immensity or intensity of the problem makes you hesitate to get involved. How can you break that pattern of thinking and simply do what you can?
I invite you to post your comments and questions and I will respond throughout the week. If you want to read more from Radical Compassion and They Come Back Singing please take advantage of the special discount for readers of this blog during the month of June (details at right).
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
I have several overwhelms when it comes to seeing an injustice or suffering where I know help is needed-in both my personal life and the problems in the world area. One area where my heart breaks 1000 times at once is cruelty to animals. I just cannnot do the do something and bring myself to volunteer in a shelter as the overwhelming outrage and feeling of helplessness at the plight of the animals would cause me a despair in which I would be good for nothing in my life. My lifestyle does not afford adopting one. So once in a while I give money. This does not make me feel good because it is not enough,but I do it because love does what it can I guess. Another area is where people are ill and I know some ways they could be helped by nutrition and natural health but I am not allowed to help the person because what I would do is contrary to what a doctor would do. Yet when I HAVE been allowed to help people based on nothing that the doctor advised, people get better. Still another area is my cousin’s kids who suffer from family dysfunction, there is little I can do, and obstacles prevent me from doing what I can. I usually believe in these situations that I am not called to do what I can because I can’t use the gifts God gave me in the situations. If I know a chronically constipated elder would be greatly helped by a natural cleanse and a change in diet and the people around the person won’t let me help them it is hard for me to just be okay with keeping them company. Occasionally I will be able to say well I am like a witness on this person’s metaphorical road to calvary, I can’t take away their cross because what surrounds them is more powerful than me at the moment, but I can be a witness and a presence. This helped me when my grandmother went through her last few months of life, harmed more by her medical services and the health care system than what her condition was. I can’t tell you how many times my form of love-my gifts and what I can bring to others has been rejected. This hurts, not so much in feeling rejected because I know it’s not about me and not personal, but just in the frustration of not being allowed to help when you know in your bones that God put you there to help. People have put conditions on my love in certain situations, basically expecting me to give what I don’t have and rejecting what I know God is leading me to give. This causes unnecessary suffering and deprivation to a person who God has called me to bless and be blessed by the love He wants me to give.
Kris, your suffering and frustration are in the same category as what Jesus went through when he was here with us. He helped many people, but his healing and teaching gifts were often rejected. He knew what people needed, but they usually wanted something else because they were simply ignorant or resistant to change. Even with the disciples, so much of the time he was dealing not so much with resistance as simple incomprehension. When the doors opened to his gifts, he healed people and expanded their understanding. But I’m sure his heart broke many days when the doors were not open. And he recognized that the people who closed doors were many times not the sick themselves but the “authorities” over them–the Pharisees and other local leaders of whom he said, “Not only can you not enter yourselves, but you prevent others from entering.”
What you say about being present and being a witness is absolutley true. To be there with people as they suffer, to bear witness to what they are going through is a huge gift. We often believe that others expect us to fix things but I doubt that this is the case. People who are suffering want to be loved and they don’t want to be left alone in the suffering.
I’m with you on the suffering of animals. I can’t even read the literature the various organizations send me, because I can’t bear to read about what has happened to animals (or, worse, view pictures!). We have adopted 2 cats and 2 dogs (well, we adopted 1 dog from the shelter, and the rest came to us), but so many days I wish I had the money to buy a big place in the country and just take in any creature that needed safety and help. I know I learned this sensitivity from my dad, but it’s a sensitivity that creates weaknesses in my soul at times. I’m all about non-violence and loving our enemies, but when I hear of someone mistreating an animal, my immediate response is, “They should throw that *^% in jail and not feed or water him for a week or two!” My emotions sort of take over my theology. Still, I think we are better off for our sensitivity. All peace–Vinita
From the readings we did last week–Isn’that what Gary did so much of the time, just be with the suffering person & listen?
I’m also reminded that years ago an activist friend of mine criticized Mother Teresa (Imagine that! :) ) because she worked with poor individuals but did nothing, he thought, to address the system which creates and supports poverty. I thought, “But we need both–People who work with individuals and people who work to change the system. And no one person can do everything or is called to address every aspect of a problem.” I thought of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians–That’s why we’re the BODY of Christ, because hands are not called to be feet, mouths, or noses.
Vinita, I didn’t realize you responded to my post until today. Thank you for your words. The TV commerical with Sarah McLaughlin for the ASPCA -I get very angry too. And I seem to more than once in a blue moon notice people who are walking their dogs and are mean to them, or dont allow then to stop and sniff but keep them tight on the leash. Why have a dog if you dont care to let the dog be a dog? Dogs and cats, the whole animal thing is horrible, and makes me wish the world could end so it would stop happening.And yet, life is good and a gift and a blessing.
I have been reading since the Lenten series and find all the reflections personally meaningful. Many of the entries give me food for thought throughout my day and have enriched my spiritual life…I find myself praying more! I appreciate this ministry because it is making an impact on my life. I always pray that I am open to opportunities to grow in my faith. My library requested from another library the two featured books for June. Thank you for this ongoing “gift” and blessings to you!
Carol, I’m glad you’re still with us! And especially glad that our continued posts are helpful. Peace to you this day–Vinita
Love does what it can – but as Kris points out sometimes what I can do, can’t be done and what I would like to do, I can’t. And, if you really can do something about the conditions and also about being present to someone, but you can’t do both, how do you know which to do? Sometimes, as Mary says, it’s easy to discern that, in this situation, you are the foot and someone else is the hand. Most of the time, I don’t want to be the knee or the back of the neck – like the Little Flower’s rubber ball that Jesus can play with or put on the shelf for later. But sometimes we are.
Love is doing what you can – not an easy discernment for me.
I think this is an ongoing and difficult discernment for everyone who tries to live by love. Parents have to make it all the time–deciding what to do for their children and what to allow the children to struggle with themselves. When do you hand a thirteen-year-old some cash so she can have fun with her friends, and when do you require that she earn it? When do you help a son or daughter get out of a bad situation, and when do you allow that son or daughter to not get out of it so easily? These issues are ongoing in families, not just between individuals who meet on the street. And in the case of our children, the ultimate goal is what will be good for the child, not what will be the most convenient for us or will make us feel better. So maybe we do make too much distinction between family members and “street” or “homeless” people–when the real goal is determined by what would best help the other person in the present situation. Peace–Vinita
I was interrupted yesterday so I quit somewhat abruptly.
One of the things that I do that is little – what I can do concerns the environment. Both my husband and I grew up in homes where the norm was ‘Use it up, make it do, wear it out’ and be conservative about the use of heat and lights and water. My husband used to tell my children, when lights were left on, “Don’t let the dinosaurs die in vain!” Now he recycles cardboard and cans from several different places as well as our own. I carry empty toilet tissue rolls home in my purse to add to his collection! We haven’t even looked at our ‘carbon footprint’ but we do contribute (and have for years before it became the current fad.) I feel guilty because I can never remember to take my cloth bag with me to the store.
In order to do more (like remember to take my cloth bag and also attend to other areas in my life in which I am the ‘only’ one and are more important now), I need to stop doing something else which seems important. I am a volunteer now who is working practically full time. And there is no one else to do the job and no money to hire someone. My family keeps reminding me that, perhaps, I am depriving someone else of the opportunity to do good; that whatever happens when I leave, it is not my responsibility; that if I were hit by a truck, they would have to deal with it. But I am having such a hard time letting go. I keep hoping that someone will come along that I can hand it over to, but it looks like all my work is going to be lost because without maintenance, it will go back to the chaos it was when I started. It is already starting to do so as I am starting to let go. It is like taking a stray to the animal shelter, I guess. I did that once – I had tried to find a home for her, but was unsuccessful. There was no way that I could adopt her myself. I cried so hard as I was answering the intake questions that even though I said she was a stray, the shelter clerk put ‘owner’ for that question. And the volunteer work that I do is not even for people who have no one else.
When one starts to think of the misery of people, the only solution is to live like Mother Teresa – with all of one’s belongings able to fit in a bucket – though even she used money that could have gone to feed the poor to travel to various countries to speak. How simple does one have to live so that other people can simply live?
As I said, ‘Love does what it can’ is not an easy discernment for me.
Betsy, I hear you. Do you have a spiritual director? I am probably wiser now than I’ve ever been, but I am now seeing a spiritual director about once a month, and she helps me see myself better, recognize God more clearly in my days, and do the difficult discerning. Just a thought.–Vinita
No, I don’t and it would be great to have one! I muddled through once before without one (and I read in a book on spirituality, that wanting a spiritual director is one of those things that if it takes too much to do, maybe isn’t what is needed! Same scenario as what Love Can Do discernment so I haven’t looked for a spiritual director. Well, that’s not true, I did look online, but wasn’t ‘moved’ to ask.)
Just reflecting with people as we are doing here sometimes is sufficient. I guess I am going to have to have a good cry about all my ‘projects’ probably dying off – and that came from this morning’s reflection. There’s still hope someone who can understand will come along before I have to give up entirely. I have done it before (for other reasons) and let go and let God and watched my ‘project’ not continue, even though I really had left good directions and no one had to re-invent the wheel.
That reminds me (why? who knows?) of when I was in one place where the Ladies Group had a terrible time getting a cross section of women. I suggested that we have ‘circles’ that met at different times and had a different focus (some, Bible Study; others, mission; others; Rosary) and then all those women could be called on for large projects like the Christmas Bazaar. Couldn’t be done. The next place we moved, that’s the way the Ladies Group was organized! Worked really well! That is an example of when Love Can, but no one wants Love (Kris’ problem) or, perhaps, I needed to learn to ‘be with the watermelons’ (another story about a group of people who were frightened of watermelons and consequently were hurting for nutrition since that was the only fruit they had. Missionary after missionary tried to convince them to eat the watermelons, but they killed the missionary or drove them out. Finally, a missionary came, settled down to live in the village, listened to the tales of how watermelons were awful, etc. and I don’t remember what happened next, but the end of the story was that he showed them watermelons were not dangerous).
And, that’s another discernment – How much is God and how much is me in what seems to be failure to be able to use gifts – what Love can do?
The daily reflection today is on not judging – and that goes for not judging what you think God should do. Sometimes, in order to untie a tangled knot of yarn, you have to push the yarn in what seems like a backwards direction. And, it also means, not judging yourself. But that would be a lot easier with a spiritual director – I can feel real guilt when I throw away the tissue cardboard instead of bringing it home! It would be nice to hear someone else say, ‘You were/were not being unloving.’
Thank you for what you are doing, i visited your site i found alot of informations which can build our faith.I encourage you keep on doing god will reward you may almighty god bless you.