c. 1998 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Impeachment of the president. The unraveling of the Israeli-Palestinian Wye accord. Renewed fighting in Kosovo. Warnings of possible new terrorist attacks against U.S. targets in the Middle East. Another U.S. military strike against Iraq.

Given all that, it’s not hard to conclude that the nation and world are falling apart. And of all times for it to happen: in the season of Christmas, Hanukkah and Ramadan _ a time of hope and renewal for Christians, Jews and Muslims.

How does one manage?”I can’t be jolly or in the spirit when you have all this hanging and you don’t know what will happen,”Mary Ruvile, a Washington office manager, said Wednesday (Dec. 16) as she took a break from window shopping along a busy downtown street.

But religious leaders took another view. Look past the day’s tribulations and focus on the bigger picture, they counseled. The moment may look bleak, but God’s promise is for a better tomorrow, they said.”These are really scary, chaotic times, but our hope comes from the promise that we won’t be abandoned by God,”said the Rev. Elizabeth Inman, a chaplain at Agnes Scott College, a Presbyterian school in Decatur, Ga.

For the Rev. Billy Graham, the answer is clear.”We live in a world dangerously torn by hate and violence and conflict,”the well-known evangelist told Religion News Service.”The infant Jesus is God’s gift to a needy world.” Other religious leaders interviewed differentiated between optimism and hope. It may be hard to muster optimism right now, but hope is of a more eternal nature, they said.”There does seem to be no room for optimism, which, with pessimism, are very human responses to the problem of evil and why bad things happen,”said the Rev. James M. Dunn, a Baptist public-policy expert in Washington.”But there’s room for hope, because that’s on the theological continuum, not the human. The common denominator in the three religious holidays celebrated by the three `peoples of the book’ is the intervention of God in history. That’s reason for hope.” Bishop T.D. Jakes, a Pentecostal preacher and best-selling author based in Dallas, said:”I think it is very possible to maintain hope in the face of despair. It’s been my experience that spirituality is often spawned through struggle, and that often it is the struggle itself that creates the greatest atmosphere for the awakening of spirituality.” Religious leaders also noted the human proclivity to compartmentalize life at stressful times. It’s a powerful survival mechanism and, this holiday period, a handy escape hatch, said Rabbi Marc Angel.”People operate on different levels. On a holiday, they can block out all the really tragic aspects of life and just celebrate with their families,”said Angel, who leads New York’s Orthodox Congregation Shearith Israel.”If you focus on the macro you’re easily overwhelmed. The mind says it’s better to focus on the immediate at a time such as this.” The Rev. Martin Marty, a Lutheran minister and scholar of religion in Chicago, agreed.

People, he said,”have a way of being aware of and addressing to the degree they can some of the problems, but then shelving them because it’s important to get that Christmas goose on the table, to get the candles lit, to bring joy to people in senior citizens’ homes and so on.” Imam Plemon T. El-Amin, a Muslim leader in Atlanta, sees the various crises today as God’s way of”reminding people that God’s plan is bigger than ours.””This is a special time. Things seem out of control beyond the ordinary level. But we have to remember that there have been worse times and the world has made it through,”he said.

At Road River Unitarian Church in Bethesda, Md., the Rev. Scott W. Alexander urged maintaining a focus on all that is good about life.”This is a tough week, objectively. But 99 percent of the people in the world today got up and did not go to war or otherwise hurt each other,”he said.”It’s easy to lose perspective, but even when things appear to be falling apart, they aren’t. Human life goes on, which is not to minimize that we come up against some pretty scary windows at times. As a religious community, our task is to stay awake spiritually, to remember the good.”

DEA END STAFF