The Big Three

what keeps me going when hope is low

Beauty.
Relationship.
Action.

As I share in Hope: A User’s Manual, these are my three go-to values when I’m low on hope or feeling stuck. I’ve been leaning heavily on the big three lately, given the news coming out of Israel and Gaza. I always tell people, these three categories work for me, and others are welcome to borrow them, or come up with their own list. (Laughter? Sleep? Moving one’s body? The possibilities are endless, so long as one keeps it simple.)

Here’s how I’ve sought to embody beauty, relationship, and action lately. Sharing here in case it dislodges something stuck in you, but also for my own accounting and accountability.

Beauty

Last week’s pastors’ retreat in Lake Tahoe continues to sustain me, especially the photos I’ve kept handy on my phone:

Eagle Falls hike

View from the van after the hike. The rain came just in time!

From the shores at Zephyr Point Conference Center.

Relationship

Technology means we pastors can be in touch with people instantly and easily, in whatever way they prefer—phone calls, emails, and texts. In this era of hyper-connection, I’ve found myself missing the good old-fashioned handwritten note, so this week I pulled out my stationery basket and sent some “thinking of you, praying for you” notecards. Artisanal pastoral care! (Supporting subscribers: you’ll be hearing more about this early next week in your bonus post.)

Also on Wednesday, my 10th grader’s school offered the PSAT as practice and then gave the rest of the day off, so I decided to take my morning church meetings at a nearby coffee shop so I wouldn’t have to drive all the way home and back before the 11:30 dismissal. The first of those meetings is a weekly prayer group. There was something holy about tuning in to the yearnings of people’s hearts, while everyday bustle took place around me. Life is so beautiful and so tenuous. 

Action

As all-out war looms halfway around the world, it’s a vital time to make connections and be present. If you have friends with ties to Israel or Palestine, have they heard from you? Last Friday I attended Shabbat services at the Reform Jewish congregation in my neighborhood, along with an elder from our congregation. And I’ve been trying to connect with some of the people we met on our pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 2019, to see what might be helpful, and I’ve given some money. It’s not enough, but it’s not nothing either.

Should I make some kind of public statement as well? I’ve thought about this a lot, and have come back to wondering what of value I would add to the din. I appreciated this article which addresses the discourse about the discourse:

The other day I opened Twitter (now called X) after some time offline to find people I don’t know demanding that I make a public statement about what’s happening in the Middle East… As I scrolled through my timeline, I saw lots of random citizens being told that if they didn’t speak out, they, too, would have blood on their hands.

There’s a facile version of taking a stand on social media that generates righteous back patting but reduces complex issues to a simple yes or no. Taking simplistic stands can also lead to twisting words. Concern for Palestinians is portrayed as support for Hamas or hatred toward Israel or Jews in general. Anger about Hamas’s deadly attacks on Israeli citizens — or any mention of antisemitism — is portrayed as denigrating the dignity of all Palestinian lives. This kind of thinking is deeply unserious and further fuels hostilities, warping nuanced positions into extremism and mistaking tweet-length expressions of outrage for brave action in the face of atrocity.

…Knee-jerk social media posts are not what bother me most, though. Instead, it’s the idea that not posting is wrong somehow — that everyone needs to speak, all the time. It discourages shutting up and listening and letting the voices that matter the most be heard over the din.

In the spirit of prioritizing the voices that matter most, here are three that I want to be heard. 

First, the rabbi who led that Shabbat service I attended also wrote here to the Muslim groups who’ve offered Jumma prayers in the synagogue every Friday for 15 years.

Second, one of my personal heroes, the Rev. Mitri Raheb, offers this reflection and trenchant appeal from behind the border wall in Bethlehem, soon after the events of October 7. 

Third: from Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg: a lot of things are true.

Who would you add to this list?

And where are you finding beauty, grounding in relationship, and taking action these days?

Steady on.