Overcome evil with good

Dear Friends

From Monterey Park to Memphis (and so many other places in our country and the world), we have been overwhelmed with news, in the past couple of weeks, that is hard to bear.

But maybe we haven’t been overwhelmed---because these things keep happening. As an essay in Sunday’s LA Times put it, “We have been here before and we will be here again.” Dr. Paul Nestadt, a professor of psychiatry at John Hopkins University, is quoted as saying, “A numbing is happening. The normalization of tragedy is human nature. It’s called adaptive psychology. If we allowed these deaths to live in our head, we wouldn’t be able to live ourselves.”

Thomas Curwen, who wrote the essay which is focused on the Monterey Park massacre said, “A familiar dirge has begun, voices rising up, struggling to find the words to match this horrendous act.”

I struggle to find the words and so for help, I look to our Hymnal, our Book of Common Prayer and, of course, Holy Scripture.

Hymn #594 includes these words: “Save us from weak resignation to the evils we deplore” and “Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the facing of this hour”, and in the next verse, “for the living of these days”.  On Ash Wednesday, in the Litany of Penitence, these words can help shake us out of our numbness: “Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty.”

But Romans 12:21 offers the best words of all for going forward:

“Do not be overcome by evil,

but overcome evil with good.”

In the meantime and along the way, Lord have mercy upon us.

John

P.S. I didn’t notice until after I took the picture of the palm trees this morning, that there is a wide blue strip in the midst of the clouds. Perhaps there is a lesson here---look for the good in the midst of tragedy. In any case, I will try to find a lighter subject for my next blog.