Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope by Joan Chittister

Author:Joan Chittister [Chittister, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-09-06T17:27:00+00:00

12. The Struggle with Powerlessness

stood on the small patch of grass in front of the little stone cottage - and watched the fire run raging up the Irish mountainside behind it. The annual burn-off had gotten out of hand. The tiny little house with its great picture windows overlooking Derrynane Bay and its remnant of old mill lay almost surrounded by flames. They licked at the fringes of fuchsia on the front lawn. They raced through the gorse at the side of the house, circled the hill around us, flirted with the propane gas tank, and then jumped the road to the other side of the mountain below the Ring of Kerry. Johnny, the groundskeeper, and four local farmers scrambled up and down the face of the hill with small shovels. They beat at each burst of fire, one clump of grass at a time, trying in vain to save a bit of pastureland here, a fence there, a telephone pole along the rutted road. In front of us, the ocean swelled and mocked. All that water and no way to get a single drop of it where it was really needed. All we could do now was to wait for the fire to run its course. In a last-ditch effort to do something - to do anything - I called the owners in Dublin. "If there is anything special that you want me to take with me out of this house," I yelled into the phone, "tell me now. We may not have much time left to save it." The voice came back: "Glory be to God, just save yourself. Get out of there. Now."

Powerlessness is the grassfire of the soul. It brings us face to face with the frustration that comes when life is out of control. When the children seem to come unmoored from everything we think we've ever taught them, we lose a sense of our very selves. Who are we really, if we could not save them from this end, prevent them from becoming involved in these things? When we are well and strong one day and laid low the next with an illness because of which we will never be the same person again, we go grey in the heart. What kind of life do we have if we can't even manage the daily routine anymore? When the job goes and the money runs out, taking our social lives and our neighborhood with it, we crumble at our very centers. What will people think? How will we ever recover? When we lose the fight for justice with authorities who for all we can tell prefer power to people, we lose trust in any institution at all. What will stop the slide to the bottom after we have spent so much fierce energy getting to the top?

We have come, then, to the Jacob who wakes up in a struggle for his life, unaware of its coming, unprepared for its severity. Life as we knew it has gone to mist and there is nothing whatsoever that we can do about it.

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