To Precarcity
Thursday, March 20, 2025
Fearing the Fragile Future
Take the Less Travelled Road,
Return to God
Psalm 138:3
On the day I called, you answered me, you increased my strength of soul.
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Luke 11:10
For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
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Words of Grace for Today –
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In the newsletter from 19 March 2025 of the transcript of their podcast titled “Moving from Me vs You to Us vs Them” the Missing Middle Initiative initiated a new word, ‘Precarcity’.
We’ve all searched for strength to deal with the threats to our communities and even our own lives as so many struggle to afford the basics of life, clean water, food, clothing, shelter. Add to that the ever greater damage and further threats to human existence the world around from climate change’s alarming ever more vicious storms, … all that and many of us have been overwhelmed.
Where can we found strength?
Some have turned to their own finances as their security. Their own homes, and investments, and income seem to provide enough security for themselves and the people they care about. That, of course, requires a harsh and uncaring blindness to others’ suffering and the effects that swiftly spreading plight has on all our lives, and even more on our futures. For example, though one has a comfortable home in Edmonton or Calgary, far from the melting Arctic, or the burning forests, the wildfire smoke still invades our summers making breathing a challenge on more and more days. And the supply of fresh water in our rivers, the glaciers in the mountains, is dwindling. No amount of wealth can provide fresh water when there simply isn’t enough to supply a city, yet alone all of us.
Others have turned to a pseudo faith that says God will let those others suffer, but will always provide for us, if we are ‘good’ enough. So they work harder at being better. Which is of course futile. We are all always really good at one thing, sinning.
The podcast makes that point that we’ve know scarcity fears: affordability for food, housing, and other basics of life. They say now that has shifted in Canada to a fear of the fragility of our future. They call that precarcity. (A new word formed from the root precarious, combined with the ending and idea of scarcity.) Precarcity brought on by the threats from Trump making chaos in the world and setting many givens on edge or on the brink, like the existence of Canada, along with Greenland and Panama, as countries not part of the USA.
So how can we deal with this ever growing, spreading threat to our lives. The ground seems to be shifting under our feet, no matter where we stand.
Denials (like ‘climate change is not real or new or anything we can do anything about’), escapes (like alcohol, drugs, hedonism, travel, privilege, luxury comforts, poverty comforts), misplaced anger and rage (such as blaming others, with slogans like ‘ax the tax’, and f- Trudeau, damn orange amoebae in the White House, or with boycotts and curses of the USA), all provide no solution while degradign the life of those who try such responses – which is all of us to some degree at times.
The only solutions are not solutions but remembrances of who we are and whose we are:
God has created us and, knowing we would sin as we have, collectively and individually, God brought Jesus to live among us, teach, heal, and sacrifice himself. Therewith God demonstrates so clearly that God offers us all 2nd chances over and over again to repent, not just during Lent. And then we can surrender to accept what only God can give us: redemption, new life, and mission worthy of life itself. The mission is to be God’s generous Grace, forgiveness, and love for all people, thus bringing hope out of this precarcity, for ourselves and for all people. Yes our strength to deal with it all comes from God, and God alone.
So we say with the Psalmist: On the day I called, you answered me, you increased my strength of soul.
And we trust Jesus’ promise that Luke reports: everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
So we pray: help us in these times of growing fears to call for strength. Help us ask, search, and knock on the door that opens life abundant for us all.
