Thoughts about
‘The Wisdom of Insecurity’

Speaking of Religion
The Rev. Dr. Tim Griffin

Last week a young man went on a rampage at Virginia Tech, killing 32 of his fellow students before killing himself. To say this was a terrible event is to say too little.
The pain and the hatred that lay within this young man are difficult to comprehend. For most of us, I hope, such pain and hatred is inconceivable. And if possible it is even more incomprehensible that this pain and hatred should be acted out in such a violent and senseless manner.
Still we struggle to make sense of it. We continue to ask why and how this could happen. And that is as it should be, I think. Human nature is such that we expect that people act for reasons, and we desire to know and understand what those reasons are. We seek to know and understand how such events could have happened and what can be done to stop them in the future. And more mundanely but more importantly, in our day-to-day lives we seek to know and understand one another.
However our desire to understand can also take us in the wrong direction. It is all too easy to become obsessed with the event and trying to understand it.
Perhaps something akin to this desire explains the media’s macabre fascination with the Virginia Tech shootings.
Since the first reports of the tragedy were released on Monday, the broadcast media has been concerned with little else, it seems. But this fact notwithstanding, the media’s coverage has done little to help us to understand what occurred or to grieve about it or to see how it might be prevented in the future. Instead, under the guise of news coverage and keeping us informed, the media seems to be using this event to manipulate our emotions.
Still I believe that our fascination with this tragedy can tell us something about ourselves. In particular, it makes apparent our fear of insecurity. In this country we rarely have to face our insecurity.
Random, senseless acts of violence and the other vagaries of life that are part of the day-to-day existence of others around the world are foreign to us. Consequently many of us never confront the fear that accompanies insecurity — the fear that arises from the realization that we are not absolutely in control even of our own lives.
But events like Columbine, 9/11 and now Virginia Tech remind us of our vulnerability and our ultimate lack of control. We realize that the acts in question were senseless and undeserved by the victims. And that means, of course, that we are all vulnerable to such violence. It could, it seems, happen anywhere, at any time and to any of us.
Some years ago Alan Watts, the Episcopal priest who did so much to make westerners aware of Zen Buddhism and other eastern religions and philosophies, wrote a book entitled The Wisdom of Insecurity. In this work Watts argued consistently with the teachings of Buddhism and Taoism, that much of our pain owes to our desire for permanence and security in a world that is inherently impermanent and insecure. Given the insecurity of life, he concluded that we should live in the present and accept the fragility, vulnerability and insecurity of life. Hence the wisdom of insecurity, i.e., we cannot change these features of life, but we can change how we respond to them.
Of course the point of these teachings is not that we should do nothing and passively allow such things to happen again and again. The point is rather that when a tragedy occurs — and tragedies will always occur — we are not overwhelmed. In other words, the point is to recognize that many things are not in our control and to let go of the effort for absolute control. In the end, this is what faith and hope is all about. Our faith and hope does not eradicate insecurity and impermanence, but it does enable us to confront it and to go forward in spite of it.
For now, I hope you will join me in praying for all whose lives have been impacted by this tragedy — the victims, the shooter and their families. ••
Father Tim Griffin is priest-in-charge at the St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, at 1946 Welsh Road in Bustleton.