Are You Ready for What May Come?

Life is unpredictable. If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we shouldn’t take things for granted. It should have prodded us to safeguard the things that matter to us, such as access to the sacraments, and work on our health, physical as well as spiritual – to generally ‘be prepared’ as the scout motto goes. However, more than a year on, many of us attend Mass less than ever, have become more sedentary, and cherish little hope in the future that awaits us.

Whether the future is bright or there is worse to come, being prepared means more than stocking up the pantry. Just over one hundred years ago, the world thought it had finally emerged from its seminal crisis, the Great War, only to find itself about to be engulfed in an influenza pandemic beyond their imagination.

So allow me, for a few moments, to lead you up a narrow path called the Road of the Gull, that winds the length of the Isle of Man’s coast. It is surely one of the most beautiful walks on this earth, a feast for the senses and a priceless dose of tranquillity. If you start at the romantic ruins of Peel Castle and head south to Corrin’s Tower (and you can manage to tear your eyes away from the glistening sea and cragged cliffs) you may observe a cluster of buildings resembling barracks across the verdant fields and perhaps feel a slight uneasiness at the incongruity of the sight.

Away from the trenches of World War I, one of the challenges of the home front was what to do with civilian internees and prisoners of war, and a quarter of them were removed offshore to the Isle of Man (which it should be noted is not part of the United Kingdom). One of these civilian men – women and children were not interned – was a self-defense trainer for Scotland Yard called Joseph Pilates. He ended up here in one of Britain’s largest internment camps, which at its greatest capacity held almost as many internees as there were local Manx.

Although internees were treated with respect and consideration, food shortages (due to the German submarine blockade) and close confinement took its toll, and Pilates observed the physical and mental deterioration of his fellow inmates with growing concern. What sort of men would emerge from these camps when the war was over? Would they even survive?

Pilates found his answers watching the local Manx cats. “For though they were nothing but skin and bones - even the most animal-loving prisoners could hardly spare them anything from their own pitiful rations when their own children were begging to be fed - they were lithe and springy … in such good shape, so bright-eyed, while the humans were growing every day paler, weaker, apathetic.”  He observed their perpetual stretching, the way they kept limber, and he devised exercises to do the same for himself and his fellow men. They became flexible like cats, ready to spring into action, and when the war ended they were not only in better shape than when they entered the camp but not one contracted influenza in the great epidemic that followed.

Readiness can mean the difference between success and failure, and Joseph Pilates discerned that it could also mean the difference between health and illness, survival and death. Whatever we may think of Pilates’s theory, we know that muscles waste away when they are not used. First they become weak, then they shrink and decay.

Mental and spiritual readiness is little different. How often do we lie to ourselves that there isn’t enough time to do something, that those spare ten minutes should be spent scrolling on the ‘phone or engaged in some other form of procrastination? In order to spring into action, we need our minds to be lithe and springy, not dulled by a barrage of images and memes. Eric Hoffer once said that it is the stretched soul that makes music. So too it is the stretched mind that is fit and healthy. Conscience is something we must exercise lest it become weak, shrunken, and wasted; prayer is something that must infuse our lives. Health is a state, not a reserve to be drawn upon on occasion, and conscience isn’t just for occasional crucial fork-in-the-road dilemmas but for everyday living and the formation of habitual good decisions, otherwise known as virtue.

The fortitude to endure times of suffering or idleness and emerge ready for a challenge requires veritable activity. Just because there is nothing tangible that can be done and the future is unknown doesn’t mean the body and mind cannot remain active. In 1991, Croatian prisoners in the Serb concentration camp of Sremska Mitrovica wove crosses from the threads of their already threadbare blankets. They composed poems and whispered them from one to another. They drew secret calendars to track the days on the inner foil of discarded cigarette packets. They held onto hope and exercised their faith by keeping their minds active, and when they were taken away one at a time to be tortured many of them survived. Some may call it coincidence, but the centuries-old battle cry of Croatia is “spremni”, which means “ready”.

The risk was great, of course, but if we are too scared to take risks in the waiting times we are not likely to exhibit courage when we are actively tested. Everything takes practice, and if we do not practice virtue in times of quiet suspense we are not likely to display virtue during calamitous adversity. Being ready for what may come – whether torture, a test of faith, or a moral dilemma – demands a stretched mind and soul. You see, stretching is all about resistance, being able to handle the pull of temptation or the demand for extra resources without snapping. It’s about extending your breaking point to counter the forces against you.

It’s tempting to be guided by circumstance and do the bare minimum to get by, but the self-discipline of readiness bears more fruit. If we don’t want to be remembered as wastrels who went with the flow, none of us can afford to not be primed for action.