Irrelevance Part 3

As is often the case when I lapse into despair, I find comfort when I am not really looking for it.

I turned to my favourite podcast by Tim Keller. It is quite amazing that often, the podcast episode I listen to at the time uncannily speaks directly about what's troubling me then.

This episode was titled "Wonderful Counselor" and covered verses in Hebrews Chapters 3-5. Keller makes the point that Hebrews was written for a people who were facing tough times and on the verge of giving up. A main theme is that "life in this world is a journey... through a wilderness." and that the only way to get through it is by getting counselling. (The irony is that I am holding the designation of Counsellor here, and I need counselling). 

The writer of Hebrews is telling them (and us) that we are living in the wilderness - like the desert the Jews were wandering in for 40 years. Sure it is not the same type of desert, but it is a desert just the same in terms of the lack of things that provide real satisfaction, that deep meaning I wrote of in the previous post. Everything that might give us happiness (even spouses, family etc) is transient for we will perish eventually. God also seems to be absent because we are not getting what we want and in the process it can be very easy to harden our hearts against Him.

And that got me thinking as well about my time here. This is a wilderness here. Faith is in retreat, under assault and the foundations of society appear to be coming apart at the seams. Despair becomes second nature and it is a struggle to fight against it. It is deeply insidious and slowly comes over you. It is why I did not recognise it at first because my own faith provided some protection but over time, that resistance gets worn down. It is also no great surprise that mental health issues are so commonly discussed here as a big threat because the only true solution faith, has largely been discredited. People scramble around for solutions (that will give them their raison d'etre, their great meaning in life) and come up with stuff that circle the issue but can never get to grips with it.

But the part that spoke unexpectedly to me was related to the earlier point about how even things that would appear to be closest to the actual answer, like our family and friends, cannot give us the counselling that enables the spiritual rest we are looking for. And the reason is that only God can provide both types of counselling we need. Keller speaks of the ministry of truth and tears.

Jesus is the ultimate counsellor because He can speak the truth to us when we need it, and He is also able to shed tears with us when we need the compassion - Keller illustrates this in referencing John 11 when talking about Jesus' very different response to the same statement by both Martha and Mary when they said their brother would still be alive if Jesus was there earlier. And He can do it because He has the ultimate credibility - He has the authority to speak the truth, and He has suffered for our sins to be able to fully empathise when we are in despair.

Life often presents us situations that require one or the other. Sometimes we just need to hear the hard facts from our spouse, our parents, our friends - without caveats, without them pulling their punches. Because to do so otherwise means that they are not really helping. But sometimes we just need a listening ear and empathy, not a hard rebuke. Most of us are good at one or the other, or maybe decent at both, but we cannot be the wonderful counsellor that all people need.

This is also why the modern obsession to find the love of one's life, that one person who will fulfill this wonderful role if you are both to grow together, results in so much pain and suffering. Because we seek a perfection no human can provide. Nor are we able to be that perfect person.

It has been illuminating for me in that while I always knew or guessed that the answer to my troubles would lie in the Word, this episode has directed me to a deeper truth, a deeper understanding.

And it has given me insight as well into my next role as a trainer and coach. This new perspective about truth and tears really gives me a clearer description of the foundation that I rely on. The style of coaching I’ve learnt is about asking questions to get to a truth that has meaning for the client. This is done without judgement on my part, but it must evoke a feeling in them that they have come to a clear unbiased view of the truth that resonates for them. And sometimes this only comes about when I ask hard questions. At the same time, I can show empathy where appropriate, when they face situations that I’ve come across in my long career. I can describe the emotions I felt when encountering those very same predicaments, so that they know someone shares their pain, that they are not alone.

This feeling that no one understands your pain is a very human tendency. Tolstoy famously wrote, “All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way “. The mistake with this quote I think is to read it literally. The deeper truth or real truth lies in his sentiment.

Irrelevance Part 2

What's with this irrelevance focus of late?

It has been a topic simmering in my subconsciousness for a while now, and I only just realised it when a recent incident proved to be the trigger that brought it to the surface. What is this irrelevance in the first place?

As always, Tim Keller's podcasts proved invaluable. One of the key ideas that his sermons revolve around, is the idea that all of us, seek meaning and validation in our lives. I am sure others have come to the same conclusions but he's the one who has influenced me the most so... It is this constant search for significance that drives all human behavior. There is a void within our soul that we yearn to fill because we sense intuitively that we were meant for something greater, that there is a reason for our existence. 

We want our existence to mean something, our efforts to make a difference to someone somewhere (doesn't have to be the world). We dread, no we fear being insignificant (irrelevant) - that our short time in this world is just a chasing after the wind. The book that really drives this home is of course Ecclesiastes. The lament in Ecc 1:2 "Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless." is not just a cry of frustration. It is also a cry for help.

There are a few main paths we can take in our search for this. Some decide that influence and power over others is the way and so they seek superiority by accumulating wealth and status. Others find a cause that essentially fulfills the same objective about finding some universal truth - whether it is climate change, animal rights, LGBTQ or any other political cause. Many of these are worthy causes but they are also the most prone to excesses. Those who champion a certain perspective, but feel insignificant or unheard or powerless to make any effective change, are liable to lash out in their fury and anger. Just look at the recent cases of those who have carried out terrorist attacks - many of them write manifestos detailing their frustrations.  They are not just out to cause mayhem, but they come to some misguided conclusion that violence is the only way to make their voice heard. They will not be ignored.

Thankfully most of us, find less extreme ways to channel our energies. It may be a passion, a hobby that proves we are 'better', that we 'get it', that we are 'hip'. Indeed, this is the foundation on which social media is built. And some of us are fortunate enough to find some labour that fulfills us. Ecclesiastes 3:22 "So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?" 

I have been sufficiently blessed for large chunks of my career to find fulfillment in my labours.  Of course there have been low points, which I have shared with you often. But even in those moments, I have always managed to find a silver lining - there were still some who valued what I could contribute. I still mattered, albeit in a limited way. But these last few years, without any real support, without anyone to supervise, without any consistent and direct supervision, I have had to find my own way to feel that I was still making a decent contribution. I thought I managed it pretty well. But it takes its toll.

With every non-response, every tiresome and challenging discussion that goes nowhere, every illogical point to refute, I am getting hollowed out from the inside. I begin to feel invisible, that my efforts are like a meaningless chasing after the wind. It is impossible to explain this to anyone else. After all, I am living the life am I not? I am richly rewarded for my 'labour' am I not? But those things I can enjoy with the fruit of my labour are merely a temporary distraction and no substitute for the real satisfaction I seek. Meaning.

This all came to a head when a decision that would affect me directly was not presented to me directly. It seemed another manifestation of the meaninglessness of my existence, that I did not matter and was being taken for granted. And I reacted badly but did not understand why at the time. After two hard days, I finally got it.

Next: how to deal with it.

Irrelevance

“ Death is nothing at all. 

It does not count. 
I have only slipped away into the next room. 
Nothing has happened. 

Everything remains exactly as it was. 
I am I, and you are you, 
and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. 
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. 

Call me by the old familiar name. 
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. 
Put no difference into your tone. 
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. 

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. 
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. 
Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. 

Life means all that it ever meant. 
It is the same as it ever was. 
There is absolute and unbroken continuity. 
What is this death but a negligible accident? 

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? 
I am but waiting for you, for an interval, 
somewhere very near, 
just round the corner. 

All is well. 
Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. 
One brief moment and all will be as it was before. 
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

Henry Scott-Holland. "Death Is Nothing At All." 

*************

I’ve been mulling over this which I shared with you, not actively but it’s been sitting there quietly in the back of my brain, bubbling and simmering away. I finally did some research and found that it was actually a poem based on a sermon that Holland gave at the funeral of Edward VII. Holland was a professor of divinity at Oxford.  The full sermon is here. My thoughts follow after that (in case you skip this but don’t…)

“Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.” — 1 John iii.2,3

I suppose all of us hover between two ways of regarding death, which appear to be in hopeless contradiction with each other. First, there is the familiar and instinctive recoil from it as embodying the supreme and irrevocable disaster. It is the impossible, the incredible thing. Nothing leads up to it, nothing prepares for it. It simply traverses every line on which life runs, cutting across every hope on which life feeds, and every intention which gives life significance. It makes all we do here meaningless and empty. “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” Everything goes to one place, good and bad, just and unjust, happy and unhappy, rich and poor, all lie down together in one common ruin. All are cut off by the same blind inexorable fate. So stated it is inexplicable, so ruthless, so blundering — this death that we must die. It is the cruel ambush into which we are snared. It is the pit of destruction. It wrecks, it defeats, it shatters. Can any end be more untoward, more irrational than this? Its methods are so cruelly accidental, so wickedly fantastic and freakish. We can never tell when or how its blow will fall. It may be, no doubt, that it may come to the very old as the fitting close of an honourable life. But how often it smites, without discrimination, as if it had no law! It makes its horrible breach in our gladness with careless and inhuman disregard of us. We get no consideration from it. Often and often it stumbles in like an evil mischance, like a feckless misfortune. Its shadow falls across our natural sunlight, and we are swept off into some black abyss. There is no light or hope in the grave; there is no reason to be wrung out of it. Life is the only reality, the only truth. Death is mere blindness, mere negation. “Death cannot praise Thee, O God; the grave cannot celebrate Thee. The living, the living, they can only praise Thee, as I do this day.”

So the Scripture cried out long ago. So we cry in our angry protest, in our bitter anguish, as the ancient trouble reasserts its ancient tyranny over us today. It is man’s natural recoil. And the Word of God recognizes this and gives it vigorous expression.

But, then, there is another aspect altogether which death can wear for us. It is that which first comes down to us, perhaps, as we look down upon the quiet face, so cold and white, of one who has been very near and dear to us. There it lies in possession of its own secret. It knows it all. So we seem to feel. And what the face says to us in its sweet silence to us as a last message from the one whom we loved is: “Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!”

So the face speaks. Surely while we speak there is a smile flitting over it; a smile as of gentle fun at the trick played us by seeming death. It is not death; nobody is dead. It would be too ludicrous to suppose it. What has death to do with us? How can we die? Everything that we cared for and loved exists. Physical death has no meaning, no relation to it. Reason refuses to bring the two together. There is no common term. Nothing that we see in this dead material now laid out under our eyes represents or involves or includes the thing that was or is alive. That which we loved is not here. That is all. It has dropped out. It has slid away. We are as sure of this as we are of our own identity. We cannot conceive any other possibility. Reason and imagination alike repudiate it.

And, as we stand there, death seems a very little thing. What really matters is the life with its moral quality, its personal characteristics, its intense and vivid charm, its individual experiences, its personal story; the tone of its voice, the pressure of its presence felt as surely now as once through eye and hand; the tenderness, the beauty, the force of the living will — its faults, and its struggles, and its victories, and its maturity, and its quivering affection. What has death to do with these? They are our undying possession.

Still are your pleasant voices,

Your nightingales awake.

For death he taketh all away.

But these he cannot take.

There is no severance, no gulf fixed. We can send our hearts over the silent frontier into the secret land. We hold converse with them that are gone from us. Not a tie is cut. They know it, we know it. The spirit bands hold. We can be content to bury this poor body, left behind, out of sight. It has nothing in it that really counts. We can be quiet and calm over it. There is no need for violent distress. All that matters shall go on as if death had never been.

Have we all felt like that now and again standing by the bed? True, we shall not be able to keep that mind. Alas! it will pass from us. The long, horrible silence that follows when we become aware of what we have lost out of our daily intercourse by the withdrawal of the immediate presence will cut its way into our souls. We shall feel it impossible to keep at the high level without a word, without a sign to reassure us of its truth. The blank veil will hang on unlifted, unstirred. Not a glimpse to be had of the world inside and beyond! How black, how relentless, this total lack of tangible evidence for the certainty that we believe in! Once again the old terror will come down upon us. What is it that happens over there? What are the dead about? Where are they? How picture it? How speak of it? It is all blind, dismal, unutterable darkness. We grope in vain. We strain our eyes in vain. “Oh, death is, after all, a fearful thing,” so we say with the old cringing fear that clings to the known, the familiar scene, and abhors the untravelled bourne.

Yes, but for all that our high mood was real, though it passes. It was a true experience; it gave us authentic intelligence. We were better able to win an insight into the real heart of things as we stood there by the bedside of the dead in spiritual exaltation, with every capacity raised to its highest level, than now when we are drawn under the drag of days, submerged, unnerved, wearied, out of spirits, disheartened. Therefore it is our reasonable act of faith to stand by our highest experience, and to assert its validity even when its light has faded out of our lives and we have sunk back under the shadows. Though we have returned to the twilight of the valleys, yet we will ever recall the moment when we stood upon the sunlit heights and saw the far horizons. It was a true value that we then gave to life and death. That act of insight cannot be disproved or discredited; even though there be a counter judgement which will not be gainsaid, and which still presses its conclusion and penetrating insistence.

Our task is to deny neither judgement, but to combine both. The contrasted experiences are equally real, equally valid. How can they be reconciled? That is the question. Only through their reconciliation can the fitness of our human experience be preserved in its entirety. How shall this be done? Is it not through the idea of growth? We are in a condition of process, of growth, of which our state on earth is but the preliminary condition. And this must mean that in one sense we know all that lies before us; and in another sense that we know nothing of it.

“Brethren, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be.” Think that well over. We are now the sons of God. That we can know for certain. That is a direct and absolute experience. And that means that we are already now that which we shall be hereafter. “There is no other world.” So said the crooked spirit of Voltaire. For the “other world” has come here. It is already over here with us, on our side. Its powers are ours. We are in possession of its resources. We have been born into it, born of its spirit, born in its freedom. Within us its secret is germinally lodged. “Our life is hid with Christ in God.” The channels are open; communications pass.

It is no novel world, then, into which we shall enter when we pass away, but our own familiar world in which we shall have had our conversation and fellowship. Therefore, from this point of view, death is but an accident. Nothing is broken in our vital continuity. What we shall be there will be the inevitable continuation and development of what we are now and here. We shall simply go on being what we already are, only without disguise, without qualification. We shall use the same forces, live according to the same methods, be governed by the same motives, realize the same intention. We are what we shall be. That is why, standing by the dead, we know nothing for them is changed. We are to use the same language as of old, to think of them under the same form, to follow them with our intimate and habitual familiarities. Yes, for they are what they were. Death does not count.

And yet, and yet, “it doth not yet appear what we shall be.” “It doth not yet appear.” Ah! How dreadfully true that is! Even though it be ever so true that this after state will be an outgrowth from what we are, yet we can have no notion beforehand of what the outgrowth will actually mean. We can see nothing ahead. No hint reaches us to interpret it. How can we picture it? How can we give it concrete and actual expression? We gaze and gaze, and the abyss is blind and black. Death shuts fast the door. Beyond the darkness hides its impenetrable secret. Not a sound comes back! Not a cry reaches us! Dumb! Dumb as the night, that terrifying silence! “It doth not yet appear.” Gaze as we may, we can make nothing of it. The very fact that it will be the inevitable result of what we are has its terrors as much as its consolations. Alas! what will the results be? What will show itself to be the issue of our days on earth? Who can say? And therefore it is a fearful thing to go out into the night alone, carrying the irrevocable past — to be changed we know not how, to remain in our alarming identity through the change, to be ourselves for ever and ever under unimaginable conditions which no experience enables us to anticipate or forestall. Dreadful, the darkness, the silence of the unknown adventure. We know nothing of what will befall. Only we know that all which is already ours, by living experience, by intimate attachment, will be gone. The warmth of the present companionship, the comfort of familiar habits, the loving intimacy of deep and dear associations, the tender presence of this fond earth, the joy, the love, the hands that touch, the voices that charm, the hearts that beat. Ah! woe, woe! They must be surrendered. We go out stripped of all that has made us intelligible to ourselves, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. Death, then, must retain its terror, even though it is but a stage in our growth, the terror of the unknown, the terror of loss, the terror of finality to what have been hitherto the movements of our very life.

Yet, beloved, if we recall the idea of growth, then we can afford to be in ignorance of what lies ahead; we can afford to live solely in the present hour. We can afford to be stripped of our earthly investiture, and go out into the naked silence of the beyond, because still through being sons of God we have secured to us the very powers which will avail us in the untravelled land. We are already equipped with all that we can ever need. We shall hold in our hands the resources which will justify themselves under these strange conditions in the unseen world. We can never be found wanting if we are true to ourselves. We can never fail over these if we cling to what God has already given. The method by which we control life here and now is the very method which will hold good there. The strength which is now our stay will prove itself still our strength there. We shall use the same forces, we shall rely on the same assurances, we shall feed on the same food, we shall grow by the same process, we shall follow the same laws, we shall pray the same prayers, we shall rejoice in the same hopes, we shall speak the same language. All that is ours now will be ours then. For we are already sons of God; already we are in Jesus; already we are of His Body; already we live by His life and taste His pardon and His peace. The Jesus whom we see and know now, is the Jesus whom we shall still see and know then; only, since we shall see Him nearer we shall grow more like Him; since we shall know Him better, we shall be more closely conformed to His image.

Ah! why need we know more? Why should we be afraid of the great venture? We have Jesus now, and even now we can make ourselves more ready to draw closer to Him. We can begin to purify ourselves even as He is pure, to make ourselves more utterly His in the sure hope that at last we shall see Him as He is.

Brethren, today these two moods which we have rehearsed are peculiarly ours— the mood of violent recoil, the mood of quiet continuity. Today the white light of Pentecost pours itself around us, and we know ourselves to be in the possession of the first fruits of the Spirit. Yet the white light breaks itself against the blackness of a closed coffin, flung up before the eyes of all, to embody the irreparable disaster of a death which has touched the very heart of our National life. Sinister and silent the coffin lies there in the sunlight, and its very pomp of state makes its silence more sinister yet. We shall creep around it in dismay as it lies in Westminster Hall. Is this all that is left? Is this the end of that royal splendour of life? Ah, then death is a dreadful thing. It is blind. It is dumb. It is stupid. What does it hold in it? “We know not yet what we shall be.” “We know not.” We can tell nothing of what the change will mean to the dead. For a change it most certainly will be. “We shall be made like unto Him.” What will that not involve? What purging? What cleansing? How much of ourselves that is now part and parcel of our nature must go, must be cut away, if we are ever to be like Him? “We shall see Him as He is.” So the text says. Can you and I bear so to see Him? Dare we make the awful venture? Who can endure such a sight and not die? Who would not shrink from so fierce a test? So this unknown experience which awaits us on the far side is charged with the terror of the unknown. We flinch from it as we look merely at the isolated coffin awaiting its last burial, the symbol of disaster. Oh that we might be left inside the familiar conditions that are ours already! They may not be wholly good, but at least they are known. They are our own. We must cling to them with the desperation of habit. As for the far beyond, it may have its wonder and its joys. But we cannot be sure. “We know not now what we shall be.” If that black coffin were all, then, we should be left to these blind broodings.

So that black coffin harbours its black secret. But over it and round it and about it the light of Whitsuntide sweeps in to scatter all our fears. Why are we afraid? Have we not the gift of the Spirit? Has it not swept in upon us with a mighty wind? Is it not in our heart as a fire? Surely it has become our very own possession, one with our very life. And the Spirit which we now possess is itself the Life of all Life, the Life of the Life beyond death. It is the Eternal Life of God. And yet it is here, as our earnest of the hereafter, as our pledge and guerdon of all that must follow. What will follow we know not. Why should we? We must wait until we experience it in order to know. But whatever it is, it will be the outcome of what we are. It will be the work of the same Spirit who works in us today.

And in the power of the Spirit we are already passed from death to life. Death is behind us, not in front. “Ye were dead.” “Ye were baptized by the Spirit into Christ’s death.” The old sinful self, the man after the flesh, the old Adam in us, is already under the doom of death. It is stricken with a mortal blow. The grip of death has overtaken it. It is given over to death, with its greeds and lusts, with its envies and cruelties, with its meannesses and deceits. It is dead. It must be buried. We can commit it to the worm of destruction, to the avenging fire, without a shudder, without a fear. For it is not ours now. We have shaken ourselves free. We are in the Spirit. We have passed over to the other side. Now, even now, brethren, we are the sons of God; we have the Spirit of Him Who says: “I am the Resurrection and the Life; He that believeth on Me, though he die, yet shall he live. And whoso liveth and believeth on Me shall never die.”

Stand on the strong Word. In its strength you can even now use your remaining days to bury that which is already dead. You can strip off the clinging garments of decay, the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Has not the Spirit in you convicted you of sin? Has it not shown you the deadly thing that must be rooted out? In this light, this Pentecost, you know your sin, your own personal sin, the sin that is under condemnation.

Well, let this sin go, then. Uproot it. Cut it away. Bury it. Burn it out. Die to it. Kill it. You can, for you are a son of God, and the spirit of sonship will do its good work in you. It will slay in you the thing that offends. It will kill in you that sin which is the only sting in death. It will expel the devil from you who alone has power in death. It gives you the weapon. Trust the sword of the Spirit. Yield to it. Let the dead things go, and lay hold on life. Purify yourself as He bids you Who is pure. Then the old will drop away from you, and the new wonder will begin. You will find yourself already passed from death to life, and far ahead strange possibilities will open out beyond the power of your heart to conceive. For, “it doth not yet appear what you shall be.” Only, you will somehow become aware of what it might mean to become more and more alike to the Lord Jesus Whom you adore, as more and more in the infinite amazement of an ever-growing surprise you learn to see Him as He really is.”

*************

The poem is more well known because of its romantic nature and allusions. Plus it's a lot shorter and better suited to today’s ADHD-riddled society (TLDR). And stripped of its religious context, it provides a certain vacuous comfort to those left behind. Those who have the FOMO will latch on to anything that suspends their fear of irrelevance (in case you wonder about the title of this post).

It’s a sticking plaster.

If you do not believe in God and the afterlife, it is essentially meaningless. There is no “round the corner” where you will laugh after meeting again. There is nothing. You will fade from their memories, just as people do in real life when they are out of sight. The lament of loss is but a passing moment, a loss that most people fill with something else (unsatisfactorily) because it is a void that they fill with things and people but not permanence, because of their own impermanence.

This fear of irrelevance is however not absent from the rest of us, those who believe in God. We are not immunised. We are however, given the answer.

The sermon (and especially the last para which is key), cuts to the bone because it identifies the struggle. We can more easily change or cut out the sins that we consciously act on. But the sinful heart is much more resistant. The Spirit acts within us, to root out sin, and in the process we are forced to confront ourselves, the ugliness and pettiness we have, the cruelties we are capable of. It is no bad thing to confront this, as well as to understand that there is no magic switch the Spirit flips to change our hearts instantly. We will stumble and those who say differently are fooling themselves.

The pain of conviction is perhaps the thorn in our sides that Paul speaks of. We know we can and should be better, to be more Christ-like. But our sinful selves long for justice in this lifetime, we want to strike a blow ourselves rather than leave it to God. We want to be loving and charitable but find it difficult when we do not trust that charity is deserved or when we know it is abused. What then?

Do we allow injustice and abuse to continue? Do we call it out? How should we call it out? How should we respond? The only thing that comes to mind now is prayer.