Pray for Ukraine

Dear Parishioners,

The following is for your own refection. It is a post written by Dr. Robert Wicks in response to the crisis in Ukraine.

God bless us all!
Fr. Citino


THE TEARS OF RENEWED WISDOM
An Orthodox priest messaged me a note from the Mayor of the city of Mariupol, Ukraine. In it he wrote, “Six year old Tania was pulled out from under the rubble of a destroyed house. We cannot say how long our little strong Mariupol girl was fighting for her life. We cannot even imagine how much this innocent child suffered. She was alone in the last minutes of her life, exhausted, scared, experiencing terrible thirst. This is just one out of many stories of the city of Mariupol, Ukraine that has been undergoing a Russian occupation blockade for 8 days in arow.”

My work for the past 40 years has been with professional helpers and healers on the prevention of secondary stress (the pressures experienced in reaching out to others). These efforts have not only taken me to 20 countries, the Mayo Clinic, Yale School of Nursing and into Cambodia, Haiti, but also more recently into Beirut to work with helpers from Aleppo, Syria who they brought there so I could speak to them on resilience through an Arabic interpreter. And so, I have seen a lot and written a great deal on self-care and maintaining a healthy perspective within the darkness, and in the spirit of posttraumatic growth, even how people grow BECAUSE of the darkness.

And so, when I received the above message and read this story of a little girl dying in the cold, alone, frightened, suffering, and dehydrated, I had heard similar stories before. Yet, this time I teared up and felt overwhelmed. This surprised and concerned me because I knew in my head that if I felt helpless and hopeless I would be of little use to other professionals in need. This was not just about me. What could I do with this experience so in some small way, this little lonely frightened girl who died without her mother, father or a friend present to even hold her little hand, would not have gone through this in vain.

Leaning back for a moment, I reminded myself, that I didn’t have the luxury to sadly sit on the sideline and do nothing. While I couldn’t prevent her awful death, I could do something to honor her. I could:

REMEMBER: I would not forget, or let others bury, the horrors of war that are lived out in the lives of innocent people while government leaders who perpetrate war, hunger, and abuse—often in the name of nationalism—sit in safety. This is one of the reasons why I am sharing this post about what is going on now in the Ukraine. The response, “I didn’t know what was happening” wasn’t an excuse during the holocaust and it isn’t an excuse now.

LET MY UPSET BE THE FUSE FOR ACTION…NOT HELPLESSNESS: If I simply became upset and felt overwhelmed, nothing good would come of knowing about the carnage. Instead, determining what actions I could take (donating money, raising people’s awareness…) and encouraging others to become involved is an initial response which will open the door to learning what new subsequent steps can be taken.

GIVE BIRTH TO A HEALTHIER PERSPECTIVE: Although I must honor the pain in my own life, knowing about the dire suffering of others should help me put my own situation in perspective. This will help me avoid magnifying my own inconveniences and problems as well as become too self-involved. Such horrors should also help me embrace more fully the heart of happiness: being truly grateful for all I have.

INITIATE NEW MEANING MAKING: Sad events in one’s life can simply pull us down and deflate us or they can lead to us to asking ourselves again what is really important in life from where we sit now. With new experiences comes the opportunity for new selflessness and humility. This is important because when we take knowledge and add humility, we get wisdom. And, when we take this very wisdom and add it to compassion, we get love…and love is at the heart of life and provides us with better view of what is truly important to know, be, and do in life.

Essentially, it is not the amount of darkness in the world or ourselves that ultimately matters. It is how we stand in that darkness that is crucial—a healthy perspective makes all the difference. I will not let that little lonely Ukrainian girl die in vain. Instead, her death will be the fuse for me to seek to live with more love. In her honor, I will examine again what I can do rather than go down the dead end of simply feeling sorry for myself because the world is such a dark place. My tears have dried for now, but the terrible stories will continue in this war and life. In response, I must continually search for new ways to be the light rather than surrender to the darkness. There is no alternative…Tania is counting on me and I won’t fail her.

Robert J. Wicks’ latest book is: The Simple Care of a Hopeful Heart: Mentoring Yourself in Difficult Times (Oxford University Press).