How to Survive a Plague

We tend to think of plagues as singular events—diseases that sweep through, peak, and then pass. But history tells a more complicated story. Some plagues don’t arrive all at once. Some linger. Some take many forms at the same time.

This season feels like that.

Extreme weather is ripping through our globe. Violence is erupting without warning–A Hanukkah celebration on a beach in Australia, shattered by gunfire. A shooting at Brown University. Two National Guard members from Iowa killed in Syria. A family torn apart when Rob Reiner and his wife were reportedly killed in their home, likely by their own son. Not to mention the political maneuvering that thrives on outrage and fear. And family holiday gatherings where long-buried tensions surface with startling clarity.

At times it can feel as though the volume of life on planet Earth has been turned up too high–bringing us all to our knees as we grab for our ears to shield them from the pain that comes from all the excessive noise. In a very real way, we are living in a kind of plague: A plague of extremes.

One would think that in the face of it all, the question circling our synapses would be How do we fix this? And for some of us, that's true. But for many of us, a different question is emerging: How do we survive these extremes without losing ourselves?

Our faith has always been more honest about this than we give it credit for. In fact, contrary to popular belief, scripture is not the story of people who avoided plagues—either literal or metaphorical. It is the story of people who learned how to live through them.

The Israelites wandering in the wilderness did not receive certainty; they received daily bread. The prophets did not offer escape routes; they told the truth and stayed where they were. The psalms did not sanitize despair; they gave it language. Jesus did not bypass suffering; he moved directly into it, choosing presence over self-preservation.

In other words, faith, at its best, has never promised immunity from chaos. It has promised orientation, companionship, and meaning in the middle of it.

Richard Rohr writes often about the danger of extremes—how they offer the illusion of clarity while stripping us of wisdom. Extremes promise certainty without humility, belonging without responsibility, answers without depth. But faith, he insists, teaches us how to live in the middle space—the place where complexity is honored, paradox is held, and transformation actually becomes possible. To be sure, wisdom does not live at the edges. It lives in restraint. In patience. And in the refusal to let fear do our thinking for us.

To survive a plague of extremes, then, is to practice what faith has always taught in hard seasons: Remaining in the middle space when everything is pulling us toward the edges. It is to resist reaction when all that surrounds us is demanding that we react. 

That might look like refusing the demand to have a hot take on every headline. It might mean setting boundaries around conversations that strip people of dignity. It might mean entering family gatherings with curiosity instead of armor—or leaving earlier than planned because self-preservation is also holy.

It certainly means remembering that we are not the first generation to live through upheaval—and that survival has never depended on being the loudest or the most certain, but the most grounded. Faith helps us survive plagues by slowing us down. By reminding us that love is not an emotion, but a practice. And by teaching us to breathe deeply when the world is absolutely hyperventilating reactivity and fear. 

We are living in a season where extremes are exposed—sometimes painfully so. But exposure is not the same thing as defeat. After all, nothing can be tended until it is first revealed. Nothing can be navigated until it is named. Nothing that feels unbearable can be carried until it is first acknowledged.

Survival, in the end, is not about conquering the plague. It is about learning how to live with depth and restraint when the world keeps demanding extremes.

So this week, notice where the volume has been turned up in your own life. Notice what is pulling you toward reaction, certainty, or some other extreme. And then see how this long tradition of faith through which you are walking might be offering you another way. A way that is slower. A way that is steadier. A way that is more grounded—right here in the middle of it all.
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On the journey with you,
Pr. Melissa

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