The thing about attending Quaker Meeting is the promise that God speaks, and that in each of us is the capacity to hear a message and also to deliver it to the community. And today almost as soon as I sat down, I was given a message about responding to the season of darkness that we are living in. Below is that message, not exactly as it came out, but I think the essential points.

I am afraid. I am sad and afraid and aware of terrible things happening and possibly happening in the world, and I feel entirely inadequate to them. I know through my experience and the wisdom of others that hope is a verb, and that the grace of God is a gift freely given, but also often given through the words and actions and ministry of those who are determined to act in service of their faith. That knowledge does not guide me in my response to the violence and climate disasters and famine all around me. I am afraid and I feel inadequate.

But I was reminded, forcefully, today of something that does happen, and certainly is going to happen in the future. I am going to be asked to lie, in specific and predictable ways. I am going to be asked to lie by people and systems who do not want to confront the world we live in. And so I prayed then and pray now for the strength when I am asked to lie to instead speak the truth.

I am going to be asked to lie and say that what’s happening is not that bad. That war is just a “limited incursion”, that state violence is targeted and justified, that an ongoing series of escalating climate catastrophes are jsut the isolated natural disasters we’ve always experienced.

If I refuse to concede that actually nothing’s wrong, I’m going to be asked to say that the suffering is deserved. That people who live under some political regimes deserve what they get, that violence in response to violence is justified. That it’s OK for some people to suffer.

After that, I will be asked to concede my own helplessness. I will be asked to believe that cycles of violence are just “who we are” and cannot be broken. That climate catastrophe is inevitable and cannot be avoided or mitigated, that pandemics cannot be stopped, and that I am so small that I shouldn’t try.

I will also be asked to believe that through my own wisdom and resources, I can keep myself and my loved ones safe. I will be asked to laugh along with Ronald Reagan’s press secretary when rumors of the AIDS epidemic were just beginning and say “well, since I’m not gay I have nothing to worry about”. I will be asked to deny that “there but for the grace of God” applies to me, and to believe that I should not show solidarity with others because I will not need it myself.

I pray for the strength to deny these lies. To assert that actually the suffering in this world is vast and terrible, that no one deserves to be bombed or live without food and shelter, or to live in terror. I pray that I may never doubt that a small group of committed individuals can change the world, and in fact it’s the only thing that ever has, and that I can act in the knowledge that what we allow to happen to any of us will inevitably be inflicted on the rest of us.