Rise and Go: A Spiritual Knapsack for the Times

At last week’s house liturgy I found myself thinking about despair. We were discussing the seventh chapter of Mark’s Gospel, where Jesus challenges the morality of the day by telling his disciples that it is not what comes from outside that harms a person, but rather the sin that rises up from inside a person that defiles. He goes on to name a multitude of evil spirits: anger, greed, licentiousness, pride. 

I thought back through my young adulthood, my childhood, and only saw one great big smear of anxiety, all the difficult moments of my life clouded over by a kind of pervasive hopelessness. Where is there room for the anxious sinner, I asked God in that moment, the person whose primary sin is not wrath but despair? 

Zbigniew Herbert was a Polish writer whose searing poems were informed by his experiences living under Nazi and then Soviet occupation in his war-torn home country. In my favorite of his poems, “The Envoy of Mr. Cogito,” he exhorts the reader again and again to continue on in the face of insurmountable cruelty, not because any hope is promised, but because “you have survived not so that you might live/you have little time you must give testimony.” 

I have not yet encountered anyone else who has written about despair with such stubbornness, such knowledge of the long odds. His lack of romanticism feels especially needed in this time. There is much talk about the rise of Christofascism in our country; but how do people sustain themselves in the struggle against it? 

In a way, I have exhausted hope, if you call hope an easy feeling of optimism. What I have not exhausted is the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other—hope as a kind of grueling daily journey, a conscious choice born out of the agency God gives me. Herbert’s poem also expresses this, describing the sensation of forging ahead precisely because it seems so unwise: “beware however of overweening pride/examine your fool’s face in the mirror/repeat: I was called—was there no one better than I?”

I am deeply familiar with this feeling of suspicion that I am the wrong person for the job. But since that’s not enough of an excuse, and the mission of ill-advised hope continues, what do I need to pack for the journey? What is in Mr. Cogito’s knapsack?

The first thing that I carry with me are words, both ancient and modern. I struggle to stay close to Scripture but there is always sustenance there. I have been meditating on Deuteronomy where God lays a simple choice before his people: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live” (Dt 30:19). I am reminded of the gift of our free will and that we always have a choice to choose those things that are life-giving, even when it seems that the world is full of curses. 

Practically speaking, I also try to stay connected to writers who are doing the work of investigating hope, particularly when it comes to climate change. For example, Bill McKibben, one activist I follow, sends missives from the climate frontlines in his newsletter The Crucial Years. His frequent newsletters share the good, the bad, and the ugly about the realities of climate collapse and the widespread work that is being done to combat it. His specific examples help ground my hope in reality rather than speculation. 

Another tool in my spiritual knapsack are the rituals that allow me to metabolize grief and despair, such as weekly house liturgy and Sunday mass. The structures of these practices allow me to feel all the feelings I push down throughout the week: exhaustion, confusion, grief, irritation, and then hand them back over to God as I pray for the changes I hope to see in the world. I recently received a beautiful letter from a reader who shares this perspective, writing, “I hope you keep yourself green and vital by going to mass as much as you can, and praying every day—taking that quiet time each morning, or during the day—before you step into the proverbial hurricane of human need.”

Lastly—if I may stretch the metaphor this far—it also matters what my knapsack is made of; how big it is. I am referring to the structure of my day-to-day life. There are many folks who subscribe to the belief that it is okay to have any kind of job you like, so long as you leave a little time in the week for volunteering or activism. I don’t mean to disparage this approach; it is still better than nothing. But I have found it necessary to build my entire life around a core commitment to making a dent in the wrongs of the world—not out of any noble reason, but for the simple fact that I don’t trust myself to prioritize it otherwise!

For me, that has looked like making my day job either teaching teenagers or slinging beans at the Catholic Worker. Spending most of my waking hours pulling in the direction of a better world, punctuated by time spent with hope-giving words and rituals, as well as time for rest and revelry, is the best approximation I’ve come up with so far as an answer to the question of how to use your life to make a difference. It’s not perfect and I still struggle with the feeling of not doing enough, but I suspect Mr. Cogito would not let me use that as a reason to give up.

What’s in your spiritual knapsack? Is it big enough, sturdy enough, to hold the size of your commitment? Did you remember to pack those things that help make a grueling journey lighter? For that matter, where are your feet leading you? 

Zbigniew Herbert, to be clear, never promised liberation in his poetry. Some have even called him essentially a pessimist, one who saw the futility of resistance against evil. But his poetry is also lit by a firm moral clarity: even if it is futile, we must continue onwards. Towards the end of the poem he offers this chilling command: “Keep watch—when a light on a hill gives a sign—rise and go/as long as the blood is still turning the dark star in your breast.” May we all find ways to shoulder our knapsacks and stay clear-eyed in the midst of the struggle. Ω

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A shorter version of this essay appeared in the October 2024 Catholic Agitator, the newspaper of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker.