Humanity, you are all One.
You are one beloved community,
and you are one global sickness.
You are all contagious—and always have been,
unconsciously infecting and yet able to also bless one another.
There are no higher and
lower in
this world.
There is no smart or
stupid;
no totally right or totally wrong.
The only meaningful division is between those who serve
and those who allow themselves to be served.
All the rest is temporary posturing.
Many to whom you look for power and leadership
have shown themselves to have empty hands, minds, and hearts.
We are bereft of all satisfying explanations,
all ledgers of deserving and undeserving.
There are no perfect answers or absolute heroes.
We must all wear a mask to protect the other from “me.”
Don’t play the victim!
Victimhood is always a waste of time—God’s time and yours.
Instead, try to learn the important lessons.
We are all in the same elementary
school now.
Here, we must learn to stand in two different places
and to change places often.
The served must also be the servants,
and the servants must also be the served.
Just stay in the eternal circle of the Suffering and the
Servants.
Christians call it the Body of
Christ.
We are not the first or the last generation
that gets to suffer and to serve on this earth.
A great deal has happened since the beginning days of the pandemic, yet the fundamental reality of humanity’s interconnectedness remains as true now as it has been at every moment in our history. But, as Pope Francis said in his recent encyclical (Fratelli Tutti [1] or All Brothers—and Sisters by implication),
If everything is connected, it is hard to imagine that this global disaster is unrelated to our way of approaching reality, our claim to be absolute masters of our own lives and of all that exists.
DISORDER is already upon us by reason of our planet, our history, our politics, our economy, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the widespread increase in mental and emotional unhealth. Our job is to make “Good Trouble”—and probably even “Necessary Trouble”—so that humanity can spiritually and politically mature.
It is about falling—but, as always, falling
upward.
Richard Rohr. October 2020
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