“A large crowd followed Jesus, because they saw the healings he was performing on the sick.” When he “saw the large crowd coming to him, he said to Philip, ‘Where can we get enough food for them to eat?’” “Philip answered him, Two hundred days wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little.” The crowd was “about 5,000 in number.” A boy came forward to offer “five barley loaves and two fish.” Another disciple, Andrew responds, “But what good are these for so many?”
The boy in the Gospel difficulty is being positive, offering help. Philip and Andrew, however, when faced with the same difficulty, have a negative response. If their negativity is circumstantial, Philip and Andrew are not unusual. Any of us can respond negatively to a difficulty depending upon factors at the time. What happens to a person that they become not circumstantially negative but substantially negative? A negativity so base that a person decides their loved ones would be better off without them. Risk factors affecting a decision for suicide include physical and/or mental illness, isolation, substance abuse, loss, depression, worthlessness, and fear of so many things, including, of being a burden. An additional risk factor for suicide may be increased screen time negatively affecting one’s mental health, especially of youth, specifically age 10-24 for whom suicide is the second leading cause of death. Suicide risk factors also include social ills perpetrated against us in the form of debt wages, student loan debt, and the mental health fragility that accompany them that can be exploited by Big Pharma and its prescription drugs. And yet, some people experience all of the aforementioned risk factors but do not kill themselves. What moves one person through difficult times in life, even when they are experiencing these many risk factors, that, unfortunately, has another person take their life? Some medical professionals studying suicide are no longer looking at nor answering questions about its risk factors. Instead, they are looking at and asking questions about healing skills. One healing skill, resilience, is becoming a primary focus of suicide research and prevention. In the last two decades, research suggest building resilience reduces stress related disorders which can devolve into suicide. Resilience means “to rebound” or “to leap again.” It is skillfulness in moving through stresses and adversities. Stresses and adversities are plentiful in our culture. In addition to the job, wage, loan, and health concerns and their exploitation, there is Covid isolation and its lingering sicknesses, gun violence, voter disenfranchisement, and political fractures including fascism. Amidst all these stresses and adversities resilience is witnessed. We take action to feed our family, care for our community, and take action to nurture our youth into being of service; to be like the boy in the Gospel. Amidst the negativity the boy brought forth the full basket of healing he could offer. All the stresses and adversities of life only pose a threat if I experience them striking at my core – believing it is empty. Do I know the full basket of healing at my core? My past challenges and my moving through them prove that I do, and yet it is likely I minimize that truth. No longer. I appreciate my skills in resiliency. I look at that which is pitted against me and do not strike back at it as an enemy but instead receive it as that which needs the healing I can give. Doing this work is hard and it being hard builds resilience. With the young ones around us who are being influenced in personal and social superficiality, pessimism, or helplessness, we can get active, creative, face difficulty, fail, laugh, improvise, cry, make connections, get challenged, fail again, love ourselves, love others, get beaten back, rebound, pray, hope, call for help, offer help, get carried, leap again, be resilient – together.
“My dear, In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. I realized, through it all, that… in the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.” (Invincible – Albert Camus)
Prayer: Spirit, together we move through with the resilience of life.
Question: How have I been resilient in the past and what is challenging me to be resilient now?
July 25, 2021 Gospel John 6:1-15 Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time