2022.10.09 | Thrive Where You Are
“Thrive Where You Are”
Rev. Pepper Swanson
Eden United Church of Christ
Hayward, CA
19th Sunday After Pentecost
Today’s reading from Jeremiah is one of those Bible passages that resonates with all of us.
Perhaps it resonates with you today or perhaps it speaks to “the you” who you were at a specific time in your life when you experienced such great change you no longer recognizes the scene or the scenery inside or outside of you.
The passage is an excerpt of a letter written by the prophet Jeremiah to those Israelites who had been taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar and exiled to Babylon. They were leaders — elders, priests, prophets — and their families, living in a foreign country against their will. Not refugees or immigrants but captives. They longed to return home to the city of Jerusalem, to the Temple, and to their friends and family and more familiar ways of living.
Circulating among them was at least one prophet who claimed they would be able to return soon, possibly as soon as two years. Jeremiah, writing from Jerusalem, was of the opinion that, according to God, the time of their captivity in Babylon would be much, much longer; perhaps as long as 70 years or a lifetime. In light of that divine vision, his letter to the Exiles gives this disturbing advice: settle down and live as if you are going to be there a long, long time.
As you heard in the reading, he advises them to build houses, plant gardens, take wives and have children, and allow their children to likewise marry and have children. He also advises them to adopt Babylon, the city of their captivity, as their own and to pray for its welfare, for its peace and prosperity.
Let us pause here and mull that for a moment: having seen their own city, their Temple, destroyed by a foreign army, they were taken as prisoners of war some 500 miles away to an enormous city, unknown to them in its language, culture, or religion. In my opinion, the sense of dislocation, anguish, and fear would have been extreme. And then to be told that it was God’s will that they settle down, establish home and family, and actually pray for the welfare of the city of their captivity would have felt disappointing and harsh. Who wouldn’t have preferred the prophet who says: “Two years tops.” Or better yet, how about a prophet who says: your God will act now to return you home immediately! I think that’s the message I would have wanted to hear.
But it wasn’t the message the Israelites received. So they settled down and lived in Babylon for several generations. It was difficult to remain faithful. But eventually, decades later, when Babylon is defeated itself by the Persian Empire, their children and grandchildren are allowed to make their way home to Jerusalem.
I think this Bible passages resonates with many of us because while not many of us have been prisoners of war, there are many experiences in life that replicate the sensations of finding oneself in a circumstances that is totally foreign and alien and wishing at some level that one could return home, if not to one’s real home than to an idealized version of one’s home. Consider these life situations:
Immigration: Perhaps the most obvious parallel, many of the immigrants and refugees arriving in the US from all over the world are fleeing war or dire economic conditions. Many arrive traumatized, not knowing the language, the customs, and the laws.
Migration: Many US residents move from one part of the country to another in search of education or work or affordable housing. One would think that there would be enough similarity of culture to make this transition easy, but the red-blue, urban-rural divide has made whole regions of our nation feel like strange and foreign lands.
The end of a relationship: Especially if one must leave a shared home and re-establish another, perhaps smaller home and learn to live on one’s own or become a single parent.
The death of a partner, a parent, or a child: the wrenching loss of a loved one can mean that everything must change, if not in one’s external world then in one’s internal world where suffering and loss is most keenly felt.
It’s poignant also how often new beginnings can often feel like losses as well. The newly cohabiting or married couple must adjust to a shared rather than single life, just as new parents must adjust to the responsibilities of 24/7 childcare. A senior who decides to sell their house and move into a retirement community also faces tremendous change, new and unfamiliar surroundings and the need to navigate new acquaintances to find friends. And, starting college or living away from home for the first time can have strands of loss of friends and family amidst the excitement of new environments and opportunities. And their parents feel this change keenly too as the nest empties and one wonders why one is still making so many pancakes or buying so many packets of noodles.
Unless we have lived lives with minimal or no growth or change, we are highly likely at one time or another to feel like we’re living in an alien, foreign situation that is not of our liking, even if it is of our making.
The Biblical advice we can take from Jeremiah is to settle down and accept one’s new life and be about the business of learning to re-embrace all the ordinary tasks of life as one would have if one had not moved or been changed by circumstances. And beyond that to begin to pray for the new place, the new circumstance, as if it was one’s own.
It’s not easy at first. It’s hard work to embrace something we don’t love or want. It seems like before we even begin to change or adapt or accept, we have to cope with feeling down and dispirited, a little grayed-out like a website option that is no longer available to us. We may wonder: Is this depression? Is this burnout? Is this anger or fear? Why do I feel so dispirited?
In March 2020, Scott Berinato wrote in the Harvard Business Review, that the discomfort we feel in change is often grief. Interviewing David Kessler, the co-author of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ famous book On Grief and Grieving, he discovers that there are many kinds of grief, including the loss of normalcy and the anticipatory grief of losing an imagined future. Kessler also spoke about micro grief — the grief we feel for our own losses — and macro grief — the grief we feel when something is happening to a collective of people and how one can compound the effect of the other.(1)
Thankfully Kessler has some advice for dealing with grief. First and foremost, it’s important to understand that there are stages of grief, which is useful to understanding one’s emotions and for understanding that healing takes time and feels very different along the way. The stages are denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, and finally, acceptance where one begins to figure out how to proceed and regain control over one’s life.
As coping strategies as one moves through the stages, Kessler recommends finding balance in what you’re thinking. For example, if your brain tends to dwell on worst case scenarios — like I’ll never learn this language or I’ll never find friends — make yourself think of the best case scenarios as well. Neither scenario should be ignored or allowed to dominate one’s thinking.
Kessler also recommends that when negative images of the future make you distressed, try to come into the present, focus on the real and tangible things around you and their characteristics and realize that nothing you’ve imagined is real or has happened or hurt you.
Third, Kessler recommends letting go of what you can’t control, especially what other people are doing. Focus, instead, on what you are doing and what is within your control.
Last, Kessler recommends being compassionate and realizing that others around you are grieving their own losses and struggling to adapt and embrace their new beginnings. And that includes self-compassion. So many of us are quick to jump over our feelings of sadness over change, blithely saying: I’m sad but I shouldn’t be because I’m also so very lucky. Kessler recommends stopping at “I’m sad.” and spending a few minutes experiencing sadness rather than hustling it to the side or pushing it away. Kessler calls this experiencing emotions in an orderly way rather than allowing them to gang up on you later when your defenses are down.
While grief is a strong candidate for what you may be feeling during a time of unexpected loss and change, there is another word that may be relevant when change and loss extends over a longer time period.
In April 2021, Adam Grant re-introduced the concept of “languishing” to the American public in a New York Times article. In contrast to depression when you have no hope or burnout when you have no energy, “languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield.”(2)
Grant pointed out that: “In psychology, we think about mental health on a spectrum from depression to flourishing. Flourishing is the peak of well-being: You have a strong sense of meaning, mastery and mattering to others. Depression is the valley of ill-being: You feel despondent, drained and worthless. Languishing is the neglected middle child of mental health. It’s the void between depression and flourishing — the absence of well-being.” Languishing is when you are doing what you need to do, going through all the right motions, but your general feeling about it is rather “meh” or indifferent or what a mother might recognize as generalized foot dragging and avoidance techniques.
The antidote to languishing, according to Grant, is to try to get to a state of “flow,” otherwise known as a state of absorption where your sense of time, place, and self melts away. Some call this immersion and can achieve it through work but also through recreational activities as simple as Wordle or weeding. At the core of flow, of course, is focus or paying close attention to one task or one goal without interruption. Unlike computers, humans are often most productive and strangely comforted by becoming absorbed in their work or hobbies.
While flow can help with a feeling of languishing, Grant acknowledges with Kessler that the first step almost always lies with acknowledging how one is feeling rather than dismissing the emotions as unfounded or unworthy of one.
The goal of the psychological advice for both grieving and for languishing is that in time, with emotional honesty and self-acceptance, one might come to flourish, which is experiencing positive emotions, positive psychological functioning, and positive social functioning, most of the time.
The goal of Jeremiah’s Biblical advice is not much different. Jeremiah’s hope was that the Israelites might accept their fate and begin to look, not to the past, but to a future in which God intends to restore the fortunes of God’s people and to bring them back to the land that God gave their ancestors. As Jeremiah writes in the chapter following today’s reading:
“But as for you, have no fear, my
Servant Jacob, says the Lord,
and do not be dismayed, O Israel;
For I am going to save you from
far away,
and your offspring from the land of
their captivity.
Jacob shall return and have quiet and
ease,
and no one shall make him afraid.
For I am with you, says the Lord, to
save you.”
My friends, take the time to grieve the changes in your life and when sadness passes, do not languish or linger in false hope or unproductive distractions. Embrace the change and remember that God is with you and for you and longs for you to thrive wherever you find yourself within God’s precious gift of life. Amen.
Berinato, Scott. “That Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief.” Harvard Business Review, hbr.org, Mar 23, 2020, https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief, accessed Oct 8, 2022.
Grant, Adam. “There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing.” New York Times, April 19, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/well/mind/covid-mental-health-languishing.html, accessed Oct 8, 2022.