Dear Reader,

You can tell how I’m doing from the state of my house plants.

I am not a naturally caring person. I struggle sometimes to care for the plants on their own schedule and feel irritated that they need so much (?!) from me.

And the days when the house plants seem too fussy and too annoying for me to water them are the days when I have turned that same attitude upon myself.

Living with chronic illness, I’ve become a person in need of extraordinary amount of care compared to the person I was before.

When I first got sick I thought I would go to a doctor and they would fix me; but there is not a simple fix for systemic breakdown. When you have unbalanced your own systems by living on hyperdrive, you can’t jolt, wish, or work everything back into place. You have to allow things to change over time. There’s not a miracle food or a pill; but there is a set of healing practices that can make one infinitesimal change today and tomorrow and the next day.

So, simply out of necessity, I’ve had to learn towards myself, towards my house plants, and towards the world a Christian virtue—a fruit of the spirit in fact—that is not very glamorous. It is called faithfulness.

Faithfulness gets up and takes the pills every day. Faithfulness goes around the house and waters the plants. Faithfulness is willing to go for a walk again today. Faithfulness will pick up the phone when I’m too tired and grumpy and sad to believe that anyone wants to hear from me. And faithfulness is the thing that keeps my life afloat.

I have become an obsessive student of faithfulness, particularly when it comes to care work, maintenance work, and the ways that faithful people hold up our very world. These are people who almost never receive any applause at all almost always receive impossible wages.

Our essential workers. Our daycare workers. our home health aides that keep our elderly family members alive. Even our sanitation workers, even our accountants, even our pastors who are willing to do unseen work, spending their time in ways that don’t seem to “move anything forward” in the way the denomination might like them to.

In colonizer culture we idolize the people who build things. We write magazine articles about people we call pioneers. We speak as obsessively as capitalism has trained us to about growth. We encourage each other to be constantly self improving.

But the truth is everything that gets built has to be maintained. The truth is every incredible work of art that gets created has to be stored somewhere. Every amazing accomplishment you can name was preceded and precipitated by months years or even decades of faithful and invisible work.

What’s more, the Earth upon which we depend lives her life in cycles: the rhythm of the seasons, the activity of each day. It’s the recyclers, the mycelium and the mushrooms and fungus, the scavengers, the sustaining and cleaning forces that make possible all of the wonders of the world that more easily impress us.

In the past when we have talked about “moving forward” in our lives we asked each other what project comes next. We wanted to know what’s the next big thing. We want to know how the church is going to grow this year. We want to look at our stock portfolios and we want to look look at our productivity and character and be sure that they are on an upward trajectory.

But when the empire starts to crumble we have to change how we think about moving forward, because to move forward is simply to survive another day. When your body seems determined to crumble, it’s the same. The work of maintenance and humble, ordinary care can no longer be overlooked or outsourced or devalued or put off until another time, because the work of maintenance—as it has always been—is the work of survival.

I see so many people whose timelines for engaging with this crumbling empire are a few weeks or a few years long. They seem to think that we just have to pass these pieces of legislation, elect these politicians, or assemble the right leaders in a room, or invest in the right technology, and then we will somehow all be back on the right track toward unremitting peace and eternally-expanding prosperity.

But that is not the reality of this crumbling empire. The reality is, we made it this way over the course of centuries. The reality is, we have to learn the work of sustenance and survival, and not to separate it from the work of creating deep and enduring change.

In the past I would’ve thought that faithfulness was a boring virtue. I live in dread of unremitting routine. And yet as time goes on, I’m coming to understand that faithfulness, a fruit of the spirit, is a gift to us. And not just in the sense that we cannot obtain it for ourselves, but also in the sense that it is a way of being worth being in.

When we can’t summon extraordinary courage or incredible talent or simple good luck in the way that we wish, we can show up again and again and again and again and again every day together. And this does grow something; but instead of extraordinary courage, it’s enduring, connected, shared courage. Instead of remarkable talent, we’re practicing a robust set of skills. And when our luck or our privilege run out, we are still growing a more resilient self in the face of whatever luck approaches.

Most of all, I believe faithfulness is a way worth being because I believe God is faithful. I believe God is not only dutiful, but delighted to show up intimately in our lives, through small acts of care—not only as Glorious Creator but also as humble sustainer.

May you find yourself surprised by sustenance this week.

peace, love, bread, and wine,
Lyndsey

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