Building Resilience is Not an Individual Practice
By Rev. Libby Howe, WCC’s Congregational Support Coordinator for Peace & Justice Ministries
Resilience. It’s all the rage. It’s the new buzzword that is buzzing around church board meetings and leadership conferences, and clergy gatherings. At the intersection of (at least) three major crises, a pandemic, economic volatility, and socio-political unrest, resilience matters. It is one of the things that we hope will help us fruitfully navigate this moment in time.
I did a quick survey (totally unscientific) of the articles coming across my social media feed that address resilience. Most of them are addressed to an individual reader and are a “how to” on becoming more resilient. One of these is from the New York Times on Dec. 9, 2021, titled “4 Ways to Cultivate Resilience in 2022: Pandemic life doesn’t have to be just about survival. You can become stronger and ready for the next challenge.” The 4 ways are:
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- Build a strong social network
- Find moments for optimism
- Interrupt the stress cycle
- Embrace the shake-up.
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Another one is by Karl Vater on Feb. 19, 2021, called “What To Do When Life And Ministry Feel Overwhelming.” He lists 5 things:
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- Be Proactive Whenever You Can
- Reduce Clutter
- Design Long Term Solutions
- Say No More Often
- Ask for Help
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A “Checklist to Build Resilience” infographic from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services encourages people to take care of your body, be proactive, be self-aware, practice journaling, break down big tasks into smaller, more manageable ones, and boost your mental health by eating well, prioritizing sleep and finding exercises you enjoy.
So, dear weary human, while you are treading water and holding back tears of frustration and keeping yourself from hurling the bad news tv into next week, you need to build a strong social network and design long term solutions and pick up a journaling practice. Ok? And when you get done with that, if you could just be a little more optimistic, I sure would appreciate that, too. (eye roll. sheesh!)
When I think about what has helped me bounce back from difficult situations in the past, it wasn’t because I did any of those things with the intentionality these articles suggest. I won’t argue that eating well, getting enough sleep, and moving my body helps make EVERY DAY better. Indeed everything listed does. They are helpful tips for living in general. And when they are all clicking, any and every difficult situation is less taxing. But that’s just it. They have to be clicking BEFORE the stressful event. Who sits down to design long term solutions in the midst of daily trauma? Kudos to the human who can. Most of us can not.
But more importantly, none of these articles name the true source of resilience. The reason I’m still functioning these days is because I have family and friends who love me. Full Stop. They will make sure I am ok. They stop their lives to help me with mine. They make me laugh when I can’t. But that’s not all. I also have a job that pays better than a living wage. So I have access to resources like mental health care. I have a safe home. And I have access and money to pay for food that nourishes my body. When I am spinning out these are the things that stop and ground me. These are where my resilience lies. Most of them have little to do with my own effort and a lot more to do with the random circumstances of my birth and the path laid down for me because of my skin color and middle class upbringing. I am concerned that our thinking about resilience is just a repackaged version of bootstrap mentality when so much of an individual’s resilience is dependent on communal and familial relationships and access to life sustaining resources.
When Jesus began his ministry (Luke 4), he sat down before people in the temple and read from the scroll of Isaiah, chapter 61.
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’
He might as well have said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to build resilient communities where everyone has what they need, where everyone is free, where everyone is seen, where everyone is known and loved and feels God’s favor.”
Resilience is not an individual endeavor. And it is not a skillset one can build, especially in the midst of enormously difficult circumstances. Resilience happens in how we treat each other, how we work for one another’s welfare, how we make sure no one is discarded, and how we share the good news that everyone matters to God and to us as God’s beloved.
The early Christian community was known as the Koinonia, a Greek word we translate to mean Community. But it is more than just a group of people. A better translation is “see how they love one another!” We build resilience by loving our neighbors. We build resilience by creating an environment that values every person and provides for every need. Imagine…a world that doesn’t tell people who are struggling what they need to do to bounce back, but gives them a soft place to land when they fall and then helps them get up, saying, “We will do this together.”
