Jesus is talking to commoners knowing that rulers “insult and persecute you and utter every kind of slander against you.” But Jesus tells them, “You are the salt of the earth.”
Jesus describes people made to feel inessential as salt – essential for life. Essential became a designation for some people during the initial stages of Covid, “those who conduct a range of operations and services that are typically essential to continue critical infrastructure operations.” The designation of essential for life was made by the most inessential of organizations, the military. Obedient to death, the military diverts from society essential people and essential resources necessary for life. The diversion is normalized in health care. The juxtaposing of these two profession was highlighted during Covid. Nurses struggles were associated with sacrifice. Sacrifice means the blood offering of a life,” aka killing. Sacrifice is usually associated with soldiers. Nurses were also associated with hero. Hero too is usually associated with soldiers, reserved for men who take life and as such are held up for worship. Hero started to be applied to women who have always given life but as such have not been held up for worship. Nurses became designated heroes, in association with sacrifice. It was as if nurses became soldiers, captains of a battleship fighting an enemy. As captains are expected to go down with their ship, so too nurses were. But like on a battlefield, the circumstance in hospitals was manufactured by inessential plunderers. Officials ignored the novel coronaviruses handbook, disbanded its authoring team, looted its funds, minimized its impact, and hindered basic life saving practices. Nurses will not act as soldiers obedient to death. They will not offer a blood sacrifice, their own. Nor will they heroically take life. They will act as salt and be life giving. They will stand up to soldiers willing to ‘insult and persecute them and utter every kind of slander against them.’ In their defiance of death and affirmation of life, nurses are no longer being associated with soldiers – rightly so. Soldiers are diminished of conscience, trained into subordinate silence so they will kill on command for the sake of war plunderers. Nurses will not be diminished of conscience, nor trained into subordinate silence allowing people to die on account of health care plunderers. Nurses are highlighting health care executives taking individual millions from profits while nurses receive scant salary increases. Nurses are highlighting government money used for executive bonuses but not for masks and PPE. Nurses are highlighting funds, time, and attention used for diversifying executive stock portfolios, lobbying for Medicare kickbacks, and cost cutting staffing practices but not for nurse hirings nor retention care, nor skill development, training, and education for nurses to maintain essential professional expertise. Inessential executives are responsible for insulting and persecuting nurses, patients, and the common good. Their plundering of the health care system is causing staffing shortages, equipment malfunctioning, and thus patient suffering and death. Rather than accurately report these truths, media too are insulting and persecuting nurses. Recent nursing strikes to change this plundering and save patients from suffering and death has nurses depicted in the media as greedy and uncaring, especially as a union. Media prove complicity with the plunderers. It seems this empire prefers people being silent soldiers rather than boisterous healers. Nurses are enduring incredible moral distress every day at the bedside of human beings for whom they are committed to give care but are being denied the essential respect, time, and resources to do so. Nurses are witnessing to us the difference between the people whom a deadly militant empire use as essential heroes and those people who really are essential heroes. Nurses deserve work and social environments that are wholly centered on people, abundant with provisions, and spiritually replenishing so as to nourish them as salt, as essential caregivers.
“what if we went slowly thoughtfully about the business of healing what if I bowed to you and you to me before we touched aching bodies what if we said out loud this is sacred work… what if I blessed your hands and you mine before we began… listening to broken bodies hungry souls would we then return to the place where so long ago we felt called where we knew for sure that we did indeed have hearts… hearts that were courageous enough to break again and again and again hearts that were not afraid to weep at the sheer beauty of (it all)… what if we were unafraid to weep at the joy of newborns crowning or the resurrection of hearts expired… or said a blessing and quietly contemplated the Mystery.” (Redesigning the Practice of Medicine – Pam Mitchell RN MFA)
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, we vow to be essential healers.
Question: How do I show support for essential healers?
February 5, 2023 Gospel Matthew 5:13-16 Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time