The Devil Is a Liar
A Messy Meditation for Midweek
I’m exhausted and my body hurts, but it’s a good kind of hurt. I survived Holy Week, and even though I spent Monday and Tuesday lying prone on the sofa, I’ve been riding a bit of a high. Holy Week is my favorite time of the Church year, because it offers a deep and intensive experience of the Christian faith that leaves me both fed and depleted. The whole week is high octane, running (sometimes literally) from one service to another and being “on” with very few breaks. It also allows me to shut out just about everything but my faith for a solid week and reset my life. To be honest, lately I’ve needed to take a break from our global dystopia and focus on the love of God, humanity’s potential for goodness, and the hope of new life.
But now that I’m plugged back into the raging dumpster fire, I’m feeling triggered all over again. I’m going to resist the temptation to catastrophize here in this post, I really am, so bear with me. Yesterday I was Facetiming with my mom, and we were sharing how we felt the world was in free fall. A rough economy and job market, eroding civil liberties and a war with Iran is enough to make anyone feel jittery, if not downright hopeless. There’s so much in the news cycle to make me feel despondent that I’ve had to ration my news consumption. As I’ve observed before, it’s not just any one factor that’s been eating away at my well-being, but the cumulative effect of so much angst over time. In the midst of this Weltschmerz, I have to remember to take the long view.
