What does the world need from us in a crisis?

The same thing it always does (because there's always a crisis.)

Once a year or so, I re-re-re-read the Anne of Green Gables series by Lucy Maud Montgomery from beginning to end. Anne is a plucky little girl growing up in Nova Scotia in the early 1900s, and most people are familiar with the first book and possibly the second, Anne of Avonlea. But the Anne series actually contains eight books that take her from 11-year-old childhood through middle-aged motherhood.

I typically breeze through the first seven books, which have their moments of tragedy but are mostly funny, wholesome, and overall, light. But somewhere in the middle of the seventh book in the series, Rainbow Valley - in which Anne’s six children are beginning to grow up - I start getting anxious. I know what’s coming. Even though I think the last book in the series, Rilla of Ingleside, is possibly the best, I also dread it.

Rilla of Ingleside follows the story of Bertha Marilla Blythe, nicknamed “Rilla.” She’s Anne and Gilbert’s daughter, the youngest, and at the beginning of the book, she’s the pretty and frivolous baby-of-the-family, mostly concerned with clothes, petty squabbles with school chums - and of course, boys.

Then World War I begins, Canada joins in, and everything changes overnight.

Knowing what’s ahead, I never exactly want to read Rilla of Ingleside when I get to it. While touched with humor and charm like the rest of the series, ultimately, it’s a dark book. The family, as well as their friends, neighbors, and entire community, suffers and grieves losses. Much of the book’s dialogue centers around important battles and milestones, and details the terrible, painful waiting the families had to go through to learn of outcomes and the wellbeing of their loved ones.

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Yesterday I scrolled past Instagram post that read “I DEMAND A CEASEFIRE” and another, within seconds, that exhorted “RELEASE THE HOSTAGES. NOW.”

While coming from very different points of view, both posts created the same reaction in my body: my fight-or-flight response geared up and I felt poised for action, yet also powerless. I am holding no hostages and I am not shooting anyone. Who are they talking to? I thought. Are they yelling at me? What am I supposed to do next?

Jump in the fray, I suppose, regardless of how little I really understand, how far removed I am from the actual experiences of actual people living in this crisis.

While what happened in Israel and is now happening in Gaza were and are terrible, they’re far from singular. Wars rage and people (including children) suffer and die every minute of every day, throughout the world, either from violence itself or the poverty and disease left in its wake. Every modern comfort we enjoy now has meant death somewhere along the line: people, wildlife, entire cultures. Most of us are living on stolen land, in bodies that carry the DNA of people who killed and vanquished, either in offense or defense. Violence is written into every victory, into life itself.

There’s no “right side” of that history, really; just one side, the one that ultimately led to the reality we live in now, built on the untold histories of so many others.

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There’s a lot about Rilla of Ingleside that wouldn’t necessarily hold up today. Pacifists aren’t treated kindly in the book, and it could be seen as glorifying or romanticizing war. But I see it a bit differently: it’s not so much war itself that’s romanticized, as the quiet determination of the people “at the homefront” who, in spite of their despair and anxiety, while losing sons and husbands and brothers and fearing for their freedom and security, know what they must do to carry on….and do it.

They seem to embrace their limitations, soldiering on in the most everyday of ways: planting the garden, knitting the socks, doctoring the community, caring for the baby. Instead of wasting energy on things they can’t control, each person focuses on the small, yet meaningful tasks and acts of service that are in their own purview.

Is it weird to admit that I envy the boundaries of a small reach and a clearly-defined usefulness? I think that’s why in spite of its darkness, I find the book so comforting.

We all hunger, I believe, to know where we can be useful, what we are called on to do. So I’ve been asking myself lately: what does the world need from me right now?

I’m trying to remind myself that no times are truly unprecedented, as fond as we are of that word. The same violence playing out now has been playing out since the beginning of time, and not every fight is mine to wade into, guns (or keyboard) blazing.

Recognizing that a fight isn’t mine doesn’t excuse me from caring about the people in it. It actually frees me up to care about everyone, without worrying about whether I’m caring about the “right” set of people or the “right” politics. It reminds me that what the world needs from me right now are the same things it always has, and always will.

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We’re facing some hard times ahead, friends. The 2024 election will likely be even more divisive than the past two were. Everywhere, simmering international conflicts threaten to boil over. The algorithm is angry and it’s only going to get worse.

Maybe the best way for we “ordinary people” to resist this evil is to lean into our humanity. Yes, it’s human to care about what’s happening in the world. But it’s just as crucially human to act in small ways, the kind the algorithm doesn’t reward us for; to focus on those “spheres of influence”

Asha Dornfest

so wisely writes about. Our children and friends and family and partners; our communities and churches and schools; our homes, and the life inside them. Art and music and books. Trees and grass and lakes. The food on our tables, the animals who provided it. Our own selves.

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As small as social media may make the world seem at times, the world is still far too big for us to tackle all of its problems. But small acts of care and attention are more accessible and just as important. They help keep us human, and they help keep that humanity rippling outward, even when there is a crisis (note: there is always a crisis.)

Listening to one another, creating hospitable spaces to connect, and supporting the people in our immediate vicinities are small things, but they are important things.

And we have to believe they are things that matter.

There are real people in real fear for their lives right now; people speaking out in real pain. It takes humility for me to recognize that I can’t necessarily solve anything for them and not to center myself in their suffering. It takes wisdom to recognize when speaking out will help and when it may cause harm. And it may take just as much courage to navigate today’s world as it did Rilla’s wartime world 100+ years ago.

And I’d like to think we can rise to the occasion today, too, within our own personal limits: one load of laundry, one act of service, one moment of connection at a time.

p.s.: As you may have noticed, my Substack has a new name. You can find out more about why I’m moving away from the “Reinvention” brand in this post.