How Shall We Cope?

Facing the Existential Angst Within Our Hearts

More and more, as the tension, fragmentation and stress grows, without any signs of diminishing, so has my concern grown. My concern is the human condition in what we are all facing and all experiencing right now. I’m wondering how can we cope?

Like sponges, we absorb the stress into our bodies—into our souls. Most of us are full of stress pushing the river upstream further and further. We mistakeningly think that a one week vacation at the beach or into the mountains will bring cure.  But, like tightly wound up spinning toys, the human soul needs time, space and grace to wind down.  Seven days away, for many of us only gives us space to actually feel how utterly tired we really are. We are intouch with our despair, I think. But are we in touch with how to cope?

Can we rest from all of this mess? Is rest the right word?

The author and poet David Whyte helps me here:

“As to finding rest, we often carry a mistaken idea that somehow, one day, we’re going to create a paradisaical place that is insulated from all the interference from the wild movement of the world. But we live amidst his constant, unceasing, tidal movement, so it is important to be able to return to and experience, a rested center that is able to hold a constellation of qualities all around us no matte where wee are, no matter what might try to break in on our solitude or peace…” (David Whyte’s Substack, “A Deeper form of Rest).

David Whyte (CONSOLATIONS) has helped us learn the stages of rest we both need and experience. See if you have EVER gotten to Stage 5:

In the first state of rest is the sense of stopping, of giving up on what we have been doing or how we have been being. In the second, is the sense of slowly coming home, the physical journey into the body’s un-coerced and un-bullied self, as if trying to remember the way or even the destination itself. In the third state is a sense of healing and self-forgiveness and of arrival. In the fourth state, deep in the primal exchange of the breath, is the give and the take, the blessing and the being blessed and the ability to delight in both. The fifth stage of deep rest is a sense of absolute readiness and presence, a delight in and an anticipation of the world and all its forms; a sense of being the meeting itself between inner and outer, and that receiving and responding occur in one spontaneous movement.

I’ve been wondering how we can rest from the chaos in our world? How can we cope?

As we move chronologically towards the election in the United States, our collective exhaustion, undoes me even more. My concern has grown exponentially. Why? Because of two main reasons: First, I’m in touch with marketplace leaders and ministry leaders every single week through my work in spiritual direction. I hear the angst and frustration. I hear the weariness and I sense the despair. Second, as I monitor my own inner world, I take note of how my inner weather pattern is informing me. Here’s an example of what happened this past week when I heard the Jury had reached a verdict int he trial of Donald Trump. I watched. I heard. I felt despair. I felt sobered. I felt dark. After this news sunk in, I said to Gwen, “Let’s get out of here and go for a hike.” We left within 5 minutes, having not planned to go hiking that day, but feeling compelled to “get out of the news cycle” and to get into nature (keep reading), we went and it helped. We felt so much better having gone out—rather than staying in. Here’s a picture of that particular Edenic hike we took only 15 minutes from our home.

Despite your political affiliation, so much negativity; so much friction; so much noise layers itself in our inside world. It’s in everyone and it is everywhere. Remember having a thread hanging out of your shirt.  You pull it, hoping to break the unraveling, but sometimes, the unraveling keeps on keeping on. Before you know it, the entire hem is unstitched. That’s a picture of how many of us are actually doing. We are unstitched. We are unglued. We are undone. This is our existential angst informing us that “We’re in trouble. The boat is taking on water—so much water that sinking is a real and tangible threat and there may not be enough life jackets for everyone who is on the boat.”

The things that use to hold us together, like family gatherings, picnics with friends and eating watermelon on a hot summer day with your “besties”, is hard. Families are fractured. Friends are divided and I’m quite sure, any day now, we’re going to find out that even watermelon causes cancer, weight gain or brain fog or worse.  It’s such a mess of threads to figure out—isn’t it?

Add to the outside world pressures to our personal lives? Remember having a personal life?  Our every day lives of work, parenting; meetings, crises big or small; groceries and church—on and on. Much of our personal lives have been eroded by social media, busyness and hamster wheel living. We juggling a lot of balls to be human these days and what if one ball drops?

The Chinese word for “busyness” literally means, heart annihilation and the existential upheaval in our soul’s angst is precisely here—the feeling of annihilation—the feeling of doom.

But we already know all this, I think.

How do we cope?

This is the question that is on my mind and heart. It’s on my mind because I have dedicated my working life to helping people cope—helping people navigate the fierce white water of life. It’s on my heart because more and more I feel coping is going to become one of the most used words in our vocabulary. How shall we cope in the midst of all of this life we are living? How would you answer my question? 

I want to offer five ways we can cope in difficult times.  The verb, “to cope” means to deal with a difficult situation; to manage through a hard time; to deal with responsibilities and challenges. I don’t want to be simplistic here as our issues are complex and so are the solutions. But there is something we can all do right now to cope. Here are my suggestions.

It’s a good word to think about---it’s even better if we can foster some ways that we can actually cope in the growing storm of discord.  Don’t speed read though my list, thinking, you already know this.  To know is one thing—but to actually be practicing these—to incorporate them into your own life—not as “another” thing you “have” to do. No, it’s not about the language of “have to”. It is the invitation do a few good practices that can help us live—help us move out of dread, doom and deadness.

1.    Live in a sustainable rhythm

We cannot live in fifth gear, all the time and call this a life.  I was at a retreat last week and had dinner with a woman who was attending another retreat at the same center where I was. Her retreat was titled, “The Art of Happiness.”  I asked her why she chose to attend this retreat, pay the money and fly here investing a lot of money and time. She said, “Because I’m not happy. I work too much. I’m stressed out and I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever really been happy in my entire life.” As I’ve thought about this person since our retreats ended, I wonder if she learned some of the ageless secrets to what it looks like to cultivate happiness. Have you?

Here it is—an ageless, primal, wise principle:

You can’t always be “on”.  You can’t always be “available.”  You can’t live well unless you know how to turn off the switch of the brain and rest; live in a slower and more intentional pace and embrace a natural rhythm that our bodies and souls were shaped to live by in life.  It’s rhythm. It is not balance. Rhythm is the primal movement of understanding sunrise and sunset; Circadian rhythms of the body; the time needed to sleep; the time to work and the time to rest from our work.

Having led thousands of men and women in exploring the violations of rhythm in our professional life and personal life, it is right here where the violence is done to our lives: doing too much; too fast and abandoning limits and margins to help us live in a more sustainable way.

For more study on rhythm, please consider reading my book, The Jesus Life. I devoted three whole chapters to exploring rhythm and the benefits of rhythm.

2.    Ceasing work—cease all you can— for one, entire 24 hour span of time.

Sabbath means “to cease”. Imprinted in the human soul is the language and need for ceasing. We can’t always be “on.” What’s important here is to realize that Sabbath is not an add on. It is not a luxury. It’s not a concept you “get” to do when you finally retire. Sabbath was designed by God as the answer to the human dilemma of too much work and what too much overload does to the soul. It kills us and makes us slave to the clock.  It’s helpful to realize that when the idea of Sabbath was offered us, it was offered to a people who were already enslaved and who were lost in the wilderness trying with all their might to find freedom. In their exhaustion, the Creator of Humanity offered a day ever single week; one day out of seven that was a day to cease—to stop—to rest.

For the lack of rest in our minds today; rest in our bodies from our work and rest from being pre-occupation about ‘what’s going to happen to us’ talk. The antidote to all of this fretful way of living is to cease.

Listen to me: The greatest violation that I see in modern life is the violation from not ceasing. We are fifth-gear people living in a fifth-gear nation navigating alot of traffic in our fast ways of living. A crash is up ahead for many of us—most of us—if the truth is know. It’s not sustainable and it’s no way to live—no way to live at all.

There’s often big pushback here. “Steve, this is too extreme.” Can’t we just take a half of a Sabbath—like a mini-sabbath.”  Of course, we can. But what is needed is one, 24 hour cycle of being “off”; being unplugged; being away from news; away from technology. 

Try it. Get a box or a basket and ask everyone in your home to place their phones in that basket for one day. See what happens. Do this one hour a day on the other six days—like a meal time. Don’t bring phones to the table. Make it a safe zone from any and all technology. Go dark for 60 minutes a day on your phone and monitor your inside world. Are you nervous about doing this? If so, why? Talk about it as you practice it.

Fast from technology and feast on connecting with one another and with your own self.

3.    Go into nature as often as you can and at a minimum of once per week. Nature brings a balm to the soul. It’s an invitation to return to Eden in a park, a path or a forest. Move off of all concrete. Move away from anything made my humans. Go into the wild and let the wild do what wild does—it gives us our breath back.

It sounds so benign to say this but nature is anything but benign. It is healing. Sit by water; Sit on the crest of a hill. Watch the trees clap their hands in the summer wind.

No one has said it better than Wendell Berry on this subject and  I will use his poem in full to let you see the wisdom he offers us in his brilliant poem: “The Peace of Wild Things.”

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wild things—anything that is alive can be a wild thing: a flower; a bird—perhaps this is why Jesus told us we should “consider the birds” and “consider the flower.” 

Let the birds by our teachers and flowers our theologians!

Take Berry’s poem on your sabbath and read it outloud—even if your alone. Read it too your family or friends. Just ask this one question: “What does this poem stir up in you?” Then just be quiet and allow everyone to share and see what happens. I suspect it will be revolutionary. I suspect it will be church. I suspect it will be life.

4.     Re-arrange your vacation and extend it, if at all possible to two weeks off. Allow the first week to be that week of entering the stages that David Whyte describes: to “come down”; to let the Adrenalin drain down and just honor your body to sleep; stare and let your soul catch up with your body.

Take more time if at all possible. Take a sabbatical when and if you can. This is an extended time off. Consider taking a sabbatical from all your meetings, commitments and obligations. Give yourself space to rest. Even consider taking a sabbatical from church.  Our pastor stood up recently and said, “We live in the beautiful mountains. Go into them. Enjoy them. Let the mountains bring your peace—as the Bible says. Come back in September. I’ll be here to welcome you.”  I wanted to stand up and give a standing ovation. It was radical to say such a thing. But perhaps our pastor is on to something.

If I were a pastor today, I’d find the courage to cut back on everything for summer months; giving people permission to be simplified. No meetings. Simple worship. Simple sermons. Simply everything.  And oh… if they fired you for doing this, hey, perhaps you’ll find the new beginning you’ve been longing for. It will not be the end of the world to rest and to rest from all our doing.  Take a sabbatical from the news. Take a sabbatical from anything that drains you. Try it and see what happens.

Here’s an article I wrote a while back that seems pertinent: “Five Benefits from Taking a Vacation.”

5.     Foster Your Flock

To Foster your flock means to intentionally do things to build a sense of deeper community and conversation. Flocking will bring us life and give us renewed consolation that we really are not alone on this big, fragile planet. Spend time with the ones you love and like.  Share a Sabbath together—but only if they are life-giving!

Recently I wrote about the part of the brain that has our “fright” or “flight” tendency. It’s how we were created to respond when we sense danger. Since, I believe we are in a danger time, add one more “f’ to our need—we need to “flock”. We need to live out our lives together. Resist isolation.

See which one of these holds the most interest for you. Which one is it? I’d love to know what is making your curious about these ideas.

Finally, let me add that I am not advocating for us to retreat and withdraw from our world. Not at all! We need to live in the tension of reflection and reaction; we need to live in the tension of contemplation and action. Life cannot be all action nor all reflection. It is life in the space between that we must learn to navigate to be and remain human and to resist becoming machines and life-less human doings—human beings.

Let me know what is stirred up!