With the world unravelling into madness, all I can do is pray

My mother used to say we were going purple for Lent, and boy, did we go purple in the Naidoo household in the build-up to Easter.

For those who don’t know, in the Catholic Church, purple or violet is the liturgical ­colour that symbolises penance, sacrifice and preparation for the holiest time on the Christian calendar, Easter.

Catholic churches adorn the sanctuary that houses the altar and pulpit in purple; the priests’ robes are in shades of lilac or amethyst; crosses or reliquaries are covered with fabric in varying shades of mauve or grape. And you will not find the usual floral arrangements in churches until Easter Sunday.

This applied to the Naidoo home too: missing from every room were my mother’s fragrant heirloom roses. Although we didn’t change the curtains or the bed linen to fit the purple Lenten theme, the atmosphere at 7 Buckingham Street, Lady­smith, went purple. No meat for the month, which nearly broke my carnivorous father. Constant sacrifices: no sweets; giving our favourite toy to a needy child. That sort of thing.

There’s a practical explanation that goes back to biblical times: purple dye was scarce and hugely expensive — hence it was the ­colour preferred by royalty and used in praising God. And Lent, the 40-day solemn season of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, echoes the time that Jesus spent fasting in the desert. The church’s Lenten appeal to Catholics is for “increased participation in the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation”.

I mention all this because, for the first time in my life, I have heeded the church’s call for more prayer, and since Ash Wednesday, 18 February, I have attended Holy Mass every morning.

I’ve never been particularly religious, attending services on Sundays and on some high and holy days. My new fervour has been spurred by the utter mess the world is in. We are living in a time so bleak and senseless that it is as heartbreaking as it is troubling, a dark time for the soul.

We’re in the middle of an environmental crisis, experiencing more extreme changes in our climate with every passing season. There have been an astonishing 24,000 deaths from a summer heatwave in Europe, and temperatures so high in South Sudan that schools all over the country were forced to close. Extreme flooding in Asia last year killed thousands and left millions homeless; historic wildfires in Los Angeles resulted in losses of $60-billion.

(More?) importantly, we seem to have lost our moral compass, with a disastrous decline in traditional religious frameworks and the rise of shaky value systems. The divide between the haves and the have-nots grows larger every day. It is increasingly obvious that although AI will be of enormous help to humankind, it will also result in huge shifts in the world of work. Remember how mechanisation changed the way people worked after the Industrial Revolution? AI will similarly affect our labour markets.

And now … the war in the Middle East. Initiated by the US and Israel against Iran, it has become everybody’s war. Nobody will be untouched by it — by the disruptions to fuel supply lines across the world, the displacement of people, volatile markets, and forecasts of a global recession.

There is so much that is out of our control, so much that we must endure without being able to steer the ship that is our life. My own anxiety levels reach fever pitch as I see how global financial instability will cause the erosion of my savings — and those of all of us living on fixed incomes.

Inflation will destroy the value of pensions across the board as the cost of living outpaces investment returns. Older people don’t have the luxury of waiting for the markets to recover so that they can regrow their hard-earned savings.

Medicate or meditate?

The question I asked myself in February, when the level of fear about the future escalated, was: Medicate or meditate? And so I committed myself at the beginning of the Holy Season to going to Mass every morning. Mother Teresa used to say: “I’m not against war; I’m for peace.”

It makes sense, then, that when all around you the world seems to be crazy and out of control, the only thing we can do is turn inwards and look for internal ways to find peace. I believe that if enough of us send a message of peace, tolerance, goodwill and compassion into the ether, it will spread like giant wings across the globe. (I have been criticised for this view, so I understand if you scoff.)

I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating: I was inspired, moved and motivated by the group of Buddhist monks who walked 3,700km in bitter winter conditions from Texas to Washington earlier this year, a meditation in motion that was meant to ­promote peace, loving kindness and mindfulness. Why? Because in the face of everything going on in the world, it was the only way they knew to counter division.

It must be said that the war is hampering my own version of the Walk for Peace.

I’ve chosen to worship at a church that is five suburbs (a 25-minute drive) away from where I live. I go there because it is a particularly sacred space, where children are included in the service, where sunlight streams through the stained-glass windows, lighting the wooden pews, where the singing is loud and enthusiastic, and the priest is kind.

Every day, he prays for peace in the Middle East. Every day I realise that I am going to have to rethink my own Pray for Peace mission come 1 April when the petrol price will rise by R3.06 a litre (and diesel by R7.51). The unbudgeted additional petrol cost will be prohibitive for me. There you have it: the geopolitical tensions in the Middle East are affecting my life.

I am writing about what I know, using my middle-class self as an example of how the rising petrol price will directly slash my disposable income by increasing daily transport costs. That in turn will drive up food prices. Inflation will rise, and budgets will be cut. My non-essential spending will shift my consumer habits to cheaper alternatives. I will stop having pedicures, manicures, facials, massages… I will eat less meat and shun expensive luxuries.

That will mean fewer jobs…

I know this seems lame when pitched against women over 60 in the far-flung rural areas having to make their government grant, the already meagre “granny pension”, stretch even further. I’m too afraid to try to fathom how they will cope. But you, my middle-class readers, know what I mean.

It’s a travesty — and all because men want to go to war. Women, AI says, are largely peace builders — although, of course, there are female warmongers. Power. Control. Craziness. In the US, they even renamed it: the Department of Defense has become the Department of War.

It seems that if we want peace, we have to will it. For me, that means walking for it. Or praying for it. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.