Whether or not you try to follow the example of Jesus, if you value empathy, I know your soul is tired right now. If you understand nuance and seek truth instead of comfortable confirmation, your mind is exhausted. If you stand for the equal humanity of every person regardless of where they were born, your feet are tired right now.
I’m with you.
Over the past month, I’ve kept coming back to this quote from the West Kerry region of Ireland (originally written as “Mo sheasamh ort lá na choise tinne”).
In years past, my refuge was prayer in the woods. I was convinced that Sovereignty caught the hot tears rolling down my cheeks. In between those gravel trail sessions, my therapist’s couch seemed to defy gravity when I sank into it. Over the past decade, hours-long phone calls with my brother have comprised the sand that has absorbed my weary heels. Commiseration from my wife, daughter, sister, and hiking buddies has washed over my aching toes like the creek where I sit on Sunday afternoons. Exchanges with my nephews help me forget about the headlines and my sore soles for hours at a time.
I’ve listened to podcast interviews and read books about the loneliness epidemic. For sure, it shows up in the quiet desperation of the lonely, but it also appears indirectly in our newsfeeds. I’m convinced that many on the far right and left believe and act upon extremist rhetoric to feel part of a tribe, to feel connected to something bigger than themselves. Insecure men abuse their power to quell their ache for meaning, fulfillment, and contentment that secure attachment could provide. Wounded and disenfranchised women find agency in the pugilism of their red-hat or rainbow-haired movements.
So, the connection I’ve experienced with safe hearts feels like an antidote or an exception. I need them more and more as a large swath of a nation without them rages, dehumanizing others. And I wish other thirsty souls would find this mitigating luxury. As my government murders bearers of God’s image on video or sexually assaults them behind barbed wire, I pray every perpetrator of violence gets wooed out of their dogma, befriended out of their hatred, and loved out of their brokenness.
