Spring flowers in our back yard. Photographed by Almut Furchert
Friends and fellow travelers,
We spent Pentecost weekend at our fireplace, recouping from our encounter with Covid. The illness we dreaded and protected ourselves from for more than two years finally arrived at our house. We met it with a mix of surprise, relief and uncertainty. It was as if some one had lifted the lid to all existential angst at once. I was afraid for my unvaccinated child in ways I have not known before as I was for my older husband. It almost felt like this intruding virus reminded us as it took over each of our cells of the devastating toll in its early days of arrival on the world stage.
Dear friends who have been through the experience before listened to my worries, offered virtual companionship, brought food or herbal remedies.
We have been well cared for and we are grateful that we have made it seemingly unscarred through a disease which has been so devastating to so many.
Existential angst is a double-edged sword. It helps us realize our mortality but it also can lead to anxiety overload and despair. Weeks of mass shootings here in the US on top of this and an ongoing war in Europe make for a daily bread hard to digest. And thanks to the nature of our news feeds and google algorithms we are fed more and more deadly news every day. As soon as my smart phone realized that I was reading up on Covid I got more and more information I had not asked for.
I know many of you are worried for your loved ones, your unvaccinated little nieces, nephews or grandchildren, and your older or weaker family members. I know that some of you are aching under the burden and guilt of a gun obsessed nation enabling suicidal teens to become mass murderers.
Pentecost is a originally a Jewish Feast, referring to the Jewish harvest feast of Shavuot, celebrated 50 days after Passover. The Christian Orthodox Tradition celebrates Pentecost for three days referring to Whit Monday as "Spirit Monday." It points to the deeper meaning of the feast shared by all traditions, which stands for spiritual renewal. The Hebrew "ruach" as the greek "pneuma" are poetic expressions for the Divine breath, breathing in us.
When I was overcome by anxiety and despair in those cloudy Covid days I asked Chuck how to make sense of the monastic "memento mori." How do we deal with our existential angst and the monastic requirement to remember we are mortal in a way that neither ignores our mortality nor becomes transfixed by it in debilitating ways?
He said, we need to get back to the present moment. We need to breath again.
This answer is simple and very difficult: we maintain our balance by becoming present to the present moment again. To breathe life in and worries out might sound like a trivial pop remedy. Still, it is what we must do time and again. We cannot care about our sick family members, or for our selves, or for this world when we are acting out of fear.
I can speak to the difficulty, as I was drowning in the angst and weariness the first 10 days of my family’s illness. Mortality became threatening. My newsfeed fed me every scary thing for a mother's heart. Some expert says kids will die from children's diseases that will come back much stronger this fall. All the other risks of raising a child. And which fever number is supposed to require we go to the ER? More uncertainty. Select bits of this information are helpful but the storm tide of opinion, prediction, and uncertainty also leads to overload.
We are not simply feeling fear from the event, but we are already paralyzed by its fearful anticipation.
And indeed, my fears had circled most around breathing. That my breathing or my loved ones breathing could be harmed. I still remember the days with our newborn when my mother heart would wake up at night carefully listening for my daughter's breathing.
There is probably no greater threat in this never ending pandemic confronting us than the vulnerability of our breathing system. And with it comes a longing to get this crushing burden of fear from our chest and to breath free again.
The vulnerability of our respiratory or pneumatic system reminds us anew of the sacredness of every breath we take. Our pneumatic nature is at the center of the Jewish-Christian understanding of Pentecost. The greek pneuma as the Hebrew ruach remind us of the divine spirit breathing in us, the same spirit who was hovering over the waters of the beginning. Ruach being breathed into everything alive. Ruach which keeps us all alive until our last breath.
I always loved the verse about looking for the holy spirit as Elijah did on Mount Horeb, standing outside his cave to see Yahweh. There came a great wind, and then an earthquake, and then a great fire, but Yahweh was not in any of them. Instead it was the still small voice that came after, in a tender breeze.
The divine spirit is tender, it is life giving, it does not shout from roof tops and it does not come in might.
We all long for a Pentecost. We long for the divine spirit to breeze over us again and to transcend what divides us. When people understand each other despite opposing backgrounds and cultural opinions. When the spirit awakens us to serve life and to dispel death and despair.
And then the Uvalde shooting. It took our breath away.
Not only for the victims dying in their blood but for all of us witnessing the evil unfold in real time. All of us being appalled, some shocked, many traumatized. As bystanders, struck by the grief for the little ones and their bereft families, it is hard also to allow the thought that the perpetrator himself might be a victim, too. A suicidal teen, bereft of a sense of belonging, bullied into loneliness, intoxicated by a culture's twisted fantasies of heroic revenge suicides. Kierkegaard speaks about daemonic rage and I think this phrase holds something of what we still do not understand about the connection between despair and murder suicides. (I have written about this in a paper I recently presented at the International Kierkegaard Conference if you are interested in a deeper and more academic analysis.)
In order to not be crushed under feelings of helplessness before these twin pandemics, we need to allow ourselves to see the murderer as a human being too. As a suicidal teen, equipped with evil hero fantasies nurtured in dark corners of the internet, and enabled by a culture willing to sell weapons of war to teenagers.
It still takes our breath away. But it also makes us see possibility again. We cannot give up on belief in change. We cannot give up on efforts to forge a spiritual (and political) renewal which will change hearts and save lives in real time.
Remembering our mortality does not mean to obsess over it nor to be paralyzed by it. It means to breathe and lean into the present moment, the moment right here and now, to feel life filling my lungs and to see the abundance provided to us. We cannot face the cruelty of the world without being grounded in the present moment. We cannot change what needs to be changed while being scared.
So this Pentecost season I hope and pray that transcendence breaks into my worries and fears and also into yours. That the Divine spirit helps us transcend our fears and breathe in gratitude and courage.
With Love, Almut
Prayer for a spirit moment
Come tender spirit
fill this suffering world
with renewed life
Come holy whisper
transmute our fears
into rain drops that nurture
our thirsty souls
Come sacred breeze
bring together what is divided
with your tender love
Come breath of God
breathe into our fearful hearts
and frightened souls
anew.
Ruach, wind of God, breathe in us.
AF