I’ve been reflecting on how we begin to rebuild our lives in these times of so much brokenness, so much confusion and chaos and uncertainty. Last week I turned to the majestic voice of Ecclesiastes, who famously announces there is a season for everything, “a time to break down,” for example, “and a time to build up.”

Is there a hint of optimism in the air these days? The Covid numbers seem to be lifting a bit, even as the vaccine portends more relief out ahead. Perhaps things are a little more quiet out there, generally, in any number of ways. I hope so.

Well, it’s over, or close. We find ourselves either elated or discouraged, or just flatout exhausted. The real question for me is what now? As a nation sailing through all this turbulence; as individuals struggling to regain some balance; as institutions and businesses, schools and churches, valiantly seeking to step out from under the Covid cloud—where do we go from here? I find myself yearning as well to step away from all the hatred we’ve spread around.

The last post I wrote came from a deeply disturbed heart. As I look around our world, I am discouraged. Many people are discouraged. I fear for the future of my country. I am distrustful that an election will bring much resolve. I told Sharon I think that post was the gloomiest thing I have ever written. I am sorry. That’s not usually the way I sort through things.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in 2004, shortly before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, gave an address about the alarming decline of Europe. To our dismay, he notes, “here in the West, there is a strange form of self-hate we can only consider pathological.” The West “no longer loves itself. All it sees in its own history is what is disgraceful and destructive, while it no longer seems able to perceive what is great and pure. In order to survive, Europe needs a new, critical and humble acceptance of itself."

We feel an intense need to be rescued these days. We look around for who might help us out of our predicament? The experts? The politicians? The church? What are the most appropriate resources to which we should turn, for guidance, for hope? We want to fly free from the oppressive clouds of uncertainty that have settled over the land, fly up out of this dingy air, up where we can get a new view of the broad landscape. When will this thing be over, where are we headed, as individuals, as a nation? It seems we’re battling an enemy we can’t even get our heads around, let alone our hands, a coalescence of baffling forces we don’t understand. Nothing is lining up according to our wishes.

As I try to write these days, the world’s fury almost stuns me into silence. What more could I possibly add, I ask myself, to counter the anxiety, the fear? What could I say to blunt the rage and the hatred, to relieve the dullness, the boredom? My voice feels smaller than it has ever felt, profoundly inadequate, too often a little shrill, unhelpful, self-questioning. We are all anxious. What could I possibly add that might be helpful?

I am becoming more aware how overwhelmingly negative our world has become. There is a lot going on out there, that’s for sure, but my biggest fear is that all the negative has seeped deeply into our hearts and minds as well. We can feel overwhelmed to do anything about what’s happening. I fear we just may tip over that tipping point as a society, never to return. The negative has a way of corroding and corrupting and ultimately paralyzing us from making things better. This is scary. I’ve never been there before.

I have a plan. You might be interested in it too. My plan is basically this: When I use words, which is quite often for me, I want to try harder to say something good. I want to refocus my attention less on the negative, which is so pervasive, less on whatever it is that fuels so much anger and hatred among us. I want to try to think and speak in a new accent of goodness. I want to check myself with the question: Does what I am saying contribute to what is good?

Augustine memorably opens his fourth-century masterpiece, Confessions, with these now-famous lines: “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” I have thought a lot about these words. I confess, I am often restless. I know the feeling. And I also confess I do not always claim the promise of rest on the other side of restlessness. I badly want this rest, this promise of peace and joy and contentment that comes with rest.

One of the great books on prayer ever written, The Cloud Of Unknowing, comes to us from fourteenth century England, written by an anonymous author, a name still unknown by scholars. The author is apparently a monk, perhaps an abbot of a monastery, most certainly a teacher of his flock, who wants to lay out a practical guide for how to begin and sustain what he calls “the work of contemplation,” the daily practice of prayer. He imagines his counsel is for everyone, not just monastics.

In our last Seattle home, Sharon and I lived downtown, on 2nd Avenue, between Pike and Pine, one block up from the deservedly famous Pike Place Market. I loved this home, this place, this city. A quick walk landed us at the door of The Market, The Art Museum, Benaroya Hall, scores of fabulous restaurants.

The other day a line from the nineteenth-century poet William Wordsworth popped into my head: “The world is too much with us.” Is it ever, I thought. I need some kind of withdrawal. Wordsworth often laments the rapacious march of the industrial revolution across his country. He is pained by the scars left on his beloved English countryside. There was much to be troubled about. But when we let the world get with us too much, he surmises, we are numbed into a kind of spiritual paralysis: “We lay waste our powers,” we give “our hearts away,” we sing “out of tune.” Could this be where we are too?

I’ve been away from my blog for a couple of weeks. I’ve felt stunned into silence over all that’s unfolding across our land. What could I possibly have to offer? I came to prayer this morning almost without words, surely with scrambled thoughts, fear for my nation, grief for my black brothers and sisters, so many of whom I know and love. I came as well with little trust that our leaders can lead us out of our polarized political and cultural environment into much needed conversation. I came to prayer this morning uneasy.

I’ve been thinking we need a good dose of nostalgia. In fact, I’m hoping for a new age of nostalgia, rising up over the horizon. There were some good things way back when, things worth remembering, reviving. Surely we can’t claim we have it all together in the present. I know I will be told to be careful not to idealize the past, and yet I am discovering that memory can restore a richness we might have lost, a stability perhaps, more continuity, making for a more colorful story. Sometimes it might guide to a better way of living.

There are just a few principles in life that really matter: love, first of all, love in all its forms, love for God, for the one we married, for family, friends, for those who desperately need love, for beauty. Add to love, then, things like loyalty, kindness, forgiveness, humility, patience, reconciliation. Not thinking too highly of ourselves, that should rank way up there as well.

If only we can be released from lockdown, we imagine, there is a normal to which we will return, simply getting out and about, going to dinner with friends, getting a hair cut, for goodness sakes, planning travel for the summer. For others, of course, it’s sending kids back to school, gathering again with colleagues over good work, heading back to college for face-to-face learning. Our times of isolation are not normal, we tell ourselves. Surely we’ll go back to the old ways. Soon. We hope. Surely.

As the lockdown lingers, nerves fraying at the edges a bit, I am trying to imagine just swinging through. Consider Robert Frost’s marvelous poem “Birches”:It's when I'm weary of considerations,And life is too much like a pathless woodWhere your face burns and tickles with the cobwebsBroken across it, and one eye is weepingFrom a twig's having lashed across it open. . . .I'd like to get away from earth awhileAnd then come back to it and begin over.

I want to propose a special kind of reading for lockdown, perhaps a perfect antidote for the anxieties of sequestration. It’s an ancient practice, much of it sparked by St. Benedict as he opened his great monastery at Monte Cassino in the sixth century. With a collapsing classical culture all around, Benedict believed the Christian life could not flourish without both reading and prayer. Along with work, these were his three pillars. We have much to learn from this enduring practice.

My son Michael had a dream the other night. He was driving his car, at quite a speed, only to discover he was driving backwards, in reverse. After slamming on the breaks a number of times, he realized he couldn’t stop the car. I get the feeling these days, don’t you? We’re driving backwards, out of control. It’s scary.