There’s little question that many of us are feeling frayed, worn thin, much like fabric that is thin. Some mornings we brace ourselves for the day’s news or we don’t even want to know what happened the day before. We’re not overwhelmed but are feeling close to it. We try to put on our best appearances when asked, “How are you?”
When societies feel frayed as well, it is a perfect time for the rise of the forces that offer simple answers to our questions, although they point us in the wrong direction. The rapid rise in grocery prices is a small but significant example.
Yesterday I looked to buy green squash but the price was double what it had been during the winter, and I had to wonder why. Weather? Higher fuel prices to transport? Add to other factors fewer workers to pick them, thanks to the anti-immigration policy, and there’s the perfect storm. We reap what we sow.
Prayer for the Day
Frayed at the edges, O Lord, we often pray.
Hoping that our center will not be frayed as well;
We’re really not fine and we know it, O God,
And we wonder what happened to us.
Give us the endurance to persevere,
Even as we struggle to maintain our equilibrium.
In the name of the One who persevered,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
We are watching in real time as …. our democracy is increasingly monetized, evidence-based science is continuously discarded, and our shared history is being stripped of facts. Some among us no longer trust their own eyes, ears or sense of reason because they have been told not to.
Aleta Payne, Duke Divinity School
True community is based on equality, mutuality, and reciprocity. It affirms the richness of individual diversity as well as the common bonds that bind us together.
Pauli Murray, activist, legal scholar, Episcopal priest (1910-1985)
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
Ecclesiastes 4: 9-12