I Got Nothing

But I’m trying to stay Fired Up

I don’t know about any of you—assuming that some of you are reading this—but I am full up. I’m having trouble functioning. After watching (Ugh, Columbia, UCLA), supporting (Vassar), and participating in protests (SUNY), while also teaching, preaching, and attending to my family, my exhaustion and frustration are at Peak Capacity. Just this past week my students have made me so very hopeful, but how institutions have responded to those students makes me so very angry. I honestly was not going to write anything today (you’ll notice how late this is) but since I made a pact with myself (and therefore with you, dear reader), I decided to try. And I decided to seek some help and inspiration. Thus, I dug into my sermon archives and dusted off a nugget from just under five years ago…

I entitled the service that day “Fired Up!” because, I guess, I was trying to get my congregation fired up to do something! I decided to use a story about President Obama since he made the phrase “Fired Up! Ready to Go!” part of his campaign. Back in the fall of 2019 when I was preparing that service, I rewatched the video in which Obama tells the story of how that refrain came to be part of his campaign. He tells of a middle-aged woman, wearing what he called “church clothes” including a nice hat and a gold tooth, sitting in the back of the room at a small gathering he went to in South Carolina. As people found their seats, she said “Fired Up” and the room repeated, “Fired Up”. She then said “Ready to Go”…and the whole room echoed “Ready to Go”. From Obama’s telling, he just watched and listened and was blown away by her ability to get the room focused and ready. He then tells the crowd that this is her thing. She was known for doing it at every community event. Then President Obama tells how that moment impacted him...it transformed his kind of not-so-great attitude and made him feel Fired Up and Ready to Go. Her chant made everyone feel fired up and ready to go. Then he says at the end of the speech, “It just goes to show you, how one voice can change a room.”  

I like thinking about how one voice can change a room. Sometimes, one voice can change a room in a bad way - by shifting the energy or being rude or inappropriate. We’ve all been there. (That’s a discussion for another time). I prefer to think about all the rooms I’ve been in where someone said something inspiring, or something that made me feel empowered or shared a truth that shifted my thinking. Or when a single voice shifted how we—as a community or country or members of humanity—thought differently, behaved differently, or took action differently. Those are the voices we need to think about now. Those are the voices in the room that make us Fired Up, that make us Ready to Go. And we need those voices badly. [And the reason I repurposed this sermon is that the young people on college campuses around the world are Fired Up and inspiring us all and I love them for that!]

Just thinking about all the horrors happening in our midst makes me weary (i.e. how I’m feeling today). I’m not going to list them all, although I did in the original sermon. I think we all have a pretty clear picture of how much suffering is happening around the globe these days. I don’t know about you, but sometimes, just when I think we are making progress to creating a better world, we just seem to slide backward. Sometimes all the sadness and strife I’m trying to comprehend, is enough to make me want to disappear - or accuttufarsi, a Sicilian-Italian mashup verb that means “to be beaten up and withdraw from human society.” 

It would be easy to give up. As Dorothy Day shared:

“People say, what is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.”

More wisdom like this comes from the Talmud:

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now. Love mercy now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”

I love Dorothy Day—what an excellent role model! She figured out how to impact her part of the world and live a life that mirrored her call to be a peace worker. She clothed and fed people, and led a movement, a movement that she knew was for the ‘long-haul.” Her choice to live at the poverty line—to earn just enough to not have to pay taxes to a corrupt and war-hungry government—was radical. And she did all of this because of her deep spiritual and religious call. (You could say that Jesus got Dorothy Day Fired Up and Ready to Go!)  She said of her work, “over and over again, people had to disobey lawful authority to follow the voice of their conscience. This obedience to God and disobedience to the State has, over and over again, happened throughout history. It is time again to cry out against our 'leaders,' to question (since it is not for us to say that they are evil) whether or not they are sane.”   

I can’t speak to knowing of any “obedience to god” from my students (or others) but they clearly know that disobeying the state is necessary right now. In his letter to clergy many years ago, Dr. King similarly pointed out the need for disobedience, for direct action—to not sit idly by—because, through action, we create a tension in minds and society that must then be resolved. 

So, while today, I sit here feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, I know I just need to rest and take care of myself for a bit, and then, tap into that One Voice that for almost 40 years has gotten me Fired Up and Ready to Go! Anybody else?