Sacred Connections: Fatigue

Fatigue has taken on a whole new depth of meaning these days. I recall how not so long ago, we might have lamented travel fatigue, especially when changing time zones was involved. Perhaps we’d complain of muscle fatigue after an especially challenging workoutor some heavy lifting for other purposes. Maybe we’d be feeling a general sense of fatigue due to long days of doing too much or sleeping too little. Today, for many of us, fatigue feels a bit larger, a bit more pervasive, and much harder to remedy.

Now we might speak of COVID-19 fatigue – not the fatigue that’s a symptom of the disease, but the fatigue that comes from wrestling with this challenging adversary for a much longer time than we ever could have conceived. We might speak of the fatigue and feelings of being overwhelmed by the political and civil unrest of the day, continuing to reflect divides along partisan and cultural lines, continuing to reveal a deep tension between facts and misinformation embraced with certainty. We hear of many experiencing the fatigue wrought by our deeply compromised economy threatening employment, income and home and food security.

There is such a longing to remove ourselves from the drama unfolding around us, and simply seek refuge, retreat, or at least a very long nap. Yet Philip wrote compellingly on Wednesday as to how we must not look away, “We need to take time and space and energy to process what has happened and is happening in our country. Our belief in Jesus does not opt us out of dealing with the most frightening parts of our humanity.” Philip was writing specifically about the violence and unrest in our capital, but it also relates to the totality of it all – the level of chaos we’re experiencing that relegates record COVID-19 cases and deaths to second tier stories in our papers and news coverage.

Last spring, the Church Pension Group offered a training for clergy; it was called “Psychological First Aid” and it was in response to the post traumatic effects of our experience of COVID-19. There was a lot of helpful information, particularly on the symptoms of our human response to this continuing trauma. But in that long list of symptoms, the words that jumped out at me were “compassion fatigue”. Compassion fatigue as a result of witnessing so much pain, so much suffering, fear, frustration, so many situations beyond our control. And as we reflect on the various levels of fatigue that might feel overwhelming right now, perhaps it is compassion fatigue that cries for our attention.

Compassion is at the core of our being able to love one another, to relate to each other, to support each other in these most difficult times. When our hearts are shielded or hardened, we can come to see the other as distant, the enemy, less than, not deserving of respect, or care, or love. We can use that lie to react to each other with violence and reckless regard for the sanctity of human life. And the most difficult part is being able to walk that invisible line of standing peaceably with those truly seeking justice, compassion, and peace – and not falling prey to the outrageous, illegal and violent forces masked in words of justice but seeking power and dominion by brutal force.

We may want to look away from all that is happening, and undoubtedly some breaks are good, even necessary for our health. Small doses of well documented reality from fact-based sources are enough to keep us informed most days. But we don’t have the luxury of turning off everything, especially not our minds and our hearts. We are connected with one another, irrevocably, as children of God.

As we continue to watch events unfold – in Washington D.C. and state capitals, in hospital ICUs, in food lines across the country, let us seek to look through the eyes of Jesus. Let us see the suffering and pray for healing. Let us see the violence and be voices for peace. Let us see the hungry and seek ways we can share what we have. And when we feel ourselves numbing or hardening to it all, let us respond with compassion towards ourselves and find the quiet space to breathe more easily before returning again to witness what is being revealed.

In the chaos of it all, let us bear witness to God in our midst – in the compassionate eyes of exhausted front-line workers, in the helping hands of strangers, in the voices of those courageously speaking the truth, in the countless acts of selfless giving and expressions of love and care for each other. The more difficult the path, the more we need each other, the more deeply we are called to walk together in Christ’s love,