Throughout the current health crisis, I’ve been offering a live message on our church’s facebook page every afternoon, Tuesday through Saturday at 1pm.  My first facebook message was on March 13.  I’ve used these messages as a communications tool to quickly give out information about what’s happening at the church, and also as a pastoral ministry of hope and courage when we all need it (me included).

            The titles of the messages I’ve shared sound like chapter headings from a book on spiritual support for challenging times.  Here are a few:   Shift Attention, Keep Faith, Give Up Control, Accept Risk, Prioritize, Sustain Community, Accept Limitations, Make a Sabbath, Reach Out, Work Together, Lean Into It, Stay You.

            And maybe that is what we need right now.  Some quick reminders of how we stay spiritually healthy in a time that is straining our spirits every day.  How do we stay strong, balanced, compassionate, peaceful, even cheerful, when the environment we’re living in fills us with uncertainty, anxiety, isolation, and grieving?  I offer reminders, because I think you know what to do.  We’ve been through hard times before.  The tools are probably already in your toolbox.  It’s a matter of opening the box, selecting the right tool, drawing it out, and using it properly.

            If I had to summarize all my messages, I’d say the one universal tool, or rather the name of the toolbox is:  faith.  Faith is the thing that names the totality of our spiritual sense; the grounding that gives us our resilience:  our ability to weather tough times, bounce back, keep going.

            What I mean by “faith” (a tricky word, I know) is worldview, or maybe deep understanding.  How does the current time relate to the larger scope of history?  How does an individual life relate to the other lives?  How do human lives relate to all life, or the planet?  In short, how does the small relate to the large, the particular to the universal?

            The starting point of spirituality is recognizing something greater than ourselves, which both contains and sustains us.  Faith begins there and maintains that perspective.  Naming that greater thing and resting in that relationship.