When Everything Burns: On Showing Up, Triage, and the Mathematics of Love

On finite hearts, infinite need, and the courage to say where you actually are

I opened my email Wednesday morning to find a message from a colleague in our local clergy group. It was direct, pointed, and necessary: Where are we on Gaza? Why aren’t more pastors visible in this work? Our Palestinian Christian siblings are suffering, watching an unfolding catastrophe, and wondering if anyone in the Western church even knows their names.

I felt that email land in my chest before my mind could catch up to it.

There was the immediate sting of being called out; that particular flavor of discomfort that comes when someone names an absence you’ve been uncomfortably aware of.

There was the deeper ache of touching, even briefly, the enormity of suffering in Gaza: children, families, entire communities facing devastation while much of the world scrolls past.

And there was something else, harder to name: a feeling about how we do this work together, about what we ask of each other, about the mathematics of finite hearts trying to hold infinite need.

I sat with those big feelings for a while. I was tempted to let it go. To avoid the conversation, and the feelings. But for some reason I felt like I should response. Here was my response:

Thank you for writing and for the weight you’re carrying in this work. I hear your question about where clergy are, and I want to respond honestly from where I sit.

My heart also breaks for Gaza....for the suffering, the loss, the desperation of our Palestinian siblings who feel abandoned.

I’ve been wrestling with something similar in my own ministry, though: the question of where to direct finite energy when multiple communities are facing existential threat. Right now, I’m watching queer and trans people navigate what feels like a 3-4-5 alarm fire. Legislation targeting our families, our healthcare, our very existence in public space.

I don’t say this to diminish Gaza or to rank suffering. I say it because I think many clergy are facing an impossible calculus: how to show up fully anywhere when everything feels urgent and our capacity is human-sized.

I’ve been trying to rest in a framework of abundance rather than scarcity. To trust that absence from one frontline doesn’t equal indifference, but sometimes reflects the reality that we can only be fully present to a few struggles at once if we hope to make real impact.

I don’t have a neat answer. Just the acknowledgment that the work you’re doing matters deeply, that Palestinian Christians’ despair is justified, and that the relative quiet from some quarters likely reflects painful triage rather than callousness.

There is something about my response that still doesn’t sit well with me. The inadequacy of saying “but I care about other things okay!” But if I am most honest, it’s probably because I fear any response that might let my privileged self off the hook too easily.

Shame Is a Terrible Compass

The phrase “letting myself off the hook” reveals something, I think I’ve been using shame as motivation for my justice work. Which isn’t a great realization.

Shame tricks us into thinking that if we just feel bad enough about ourselves, somehow we’ll transcend the basic math of being human. That the right amount of self-loathing will bust past the finite nature of time and space, or expand the actual capacity of the human heart.

It won’t.

Shame shuts us down instead of moving us forward. It cements you in place. It keeps you feeling bad about everything you’re not doing rather than directing you toward the one thing you can actually reach. Shame is paralysis dressed up as conscience.

Shame lies about what motivates sustainable action. It whispers that self-flagellation is the fuel we need to keep going. But shame is gasoline, not solar power; it’s non-renewable. The work that lasts comes from love, from connection, from vision of what’s possible. Not from an ever-growing list of ways you’re failing.

Shame makes it all about you instead of about the people you’re in relationship with. When shame is driving, you’re focused on managing your own feelings. Your inadequacy, your unworthiness, your desperate need to prove you’re one of the good ones. That’s a closed loop. It turns justice work into a performance of your own moral purity instead of actual solidarity with real people facing real harm. The question stops being “What do my neighbors need?” and becomes “How bad do I feel about myself?”

Shame doesn’t honor our human limitations and those limitations are real. Let’s be clear about what privilege is and isn’t. Yes, I have it. Lots of it. But privilege doesn’t grant immunity from being one person with one life. I still have twenty-four hours in a day. One body. One presence. One finite reservoir of attention and energy.

When we weaponize shame against each other, we’re not building the relationships liberation requires. When movements make “not feeling bad enough” the measure of commitment, we’re playing a game nobody can win. We’re isolating each other instead of organizing together. We’re creating a culture of performance and burnout instead of sustainability and care.

Shame doesn’t free anyone. It just burns people out faster.

But please don’t take what I am saying as a finger wagging “I was shamed in an email. The person who sent isn’t a bad person”**. That’s not what I am saying. What I am saying is the email touched the shame I have been using as a source of fuel, and that is not a good thing.

(**Quick note: in the email version there was a typo.)

Different Doors, Same Building: An Invitation to See Connections

What if we stopped seeing each other’s work as competition for scarce resources and started seeing it as part of the same project?

Pay attention to the systems, not just the symptoms. These fights aren’t as separate as they look. And recognizing that doesn’t diminish the limited and sometimes specific work each of us can do, it dignifies it. It means you’re part of something larger than any single issue or movement.

The same systems oppress different people using similar playbooks. Take pinkwashing: Israel using LGBTQ+ rights as propaganda to justify apartheid and genocide. That’s not two separate issues. That’s the same system using one marginalized group to justify violence against another. Surveillance technology gets tested on Palestinians, then deployed against Black Lives Matter protesters. Immigration enforcement tactics mirror occupation strategies. The criminalization of trans existence and the dehumanization of Palestinians both require convincing people that certain humans aren’t fully human.

See the pattern? Once you start looking, you can’t unsee it.

Your work on one issue is already contributing to others. Take heart in that. So when someone asks “Why aren’t you working on X?” maybe the honest answer is “I am. Just from a different entrance to the same building.”

This isn’t a cop-out. If you are making the connections. It’s an invitation to see liberation as one work, even when we’re standing at different doors. You don’t have to be everywhere. You’re already part of the whole.

When you weaken oppressive systems anywhere, you weaken them everywhere. This isn’t just feel-good solidarity talk. It’s strategic reality. When you build power for one marginalized community, you’re building power for all of us. When you expose how dehumanization works in one context, you’re giving people tools to recognize it in others.

The trans kids you’re protecting? They’re connected to the immigrant family being targeted by the same logic of disposability. This isn’t about ranking suffering or comparing struggles. It’s about making sure you are linking our liberations together.

We’re not competing for scarce resources, we’re building shared power. Get curious about the connections between your cause and others. Trace the threads. Look for the shared infrastructure of oppression and the shared possibilities for liberation. Celebrate when someone else wins a victory, because it weakens the same system you’re fighting.

Our job isn’t to work on everything. It’s to work on our part with an understanding of how it connects to the whole, and to cheer for everyone else doing their part too.

Triage Works Because Everyone Knows the Rules: One Way to Manage Scarcity Openly

So if shame doesn’t work and we can’t do everything, how do we navigate the reality that the need will always exceed our capacity? How do we make choices about where to show up without pretending those choices don’t cost something?

Here’s one possibility: we could learn from emergency rooms. Triage is that brutal, necessary practice of deciding where to direct limited resources when everyone needs help. It’s a word from emergency medicine, from battlefields and disaster zones. It means making choices no one should have to make: who gets attended to first when there aren’t enough hands, enough hours, enough of us to go around.

In an emergency room, triage happens in plain sight. The criteria are posted. The reasoning is shared. Everyone knows how decisions get made: who gets seen first, who waits, and why. It’s not ideal. Ideal would be unlimited doctors and no emergencies. But at least it’s transparent. That transparency is what makes the system functional.

But I’ve noticed, at least for myself, I’m doing all my triage internally, or at best with a trusted few. I’m making these impossible calculations in private, wrestling with them in my own head or maybe in a text thread with a close colleague. But I don’t communicate any of it more broadly. I don’t name publicly where I’m showing up or why, or maybe more importantly where I am not, and why not. The principles that define what people should expect from me.

I can see what it can feel like ghosting. Not intentionally, nor maliciously. An email about an adjacent coalition meeting sits in my inbox. A request to sign onto a statement goes unanswered. An invitation to join a working group just... fades away into silence.

I’ve triaged but failed to communicate, because I’m ashamed I had to triage in the first place.

And I wonder if that’s part of why I felt so isolated when my colleague’s email landed. I’m over here doing my own invisible triage, making my own private calculations about capacity and calling, and meanwhile everyone else is doing the same thing in their own heads. We’re all alone with these impossible choices, never knowing if anyone else is struggling with them too.

What if transparency about my limitations could actually help us coordinate better?
This is where self-differentiation comes in, the ability to say clearly “here’s who I am, here’s what I’m doing, here’s what I believe” without needing everyone to agree with me or approve of my choices. Not as a defensive move, but as an act of clarity that actually makes relationship possible.

What if I just said it out loud? “Here’s why I’m showing up here. Here’s what I can and can’t take on right now. Here’s how I’m making these impossible choices.”

But that requires me being clear about my own boundaries and commitments without being defensive about them. It requires being able to hear someone say “But what about Gaza?” without immediately collapsing into shame or rigidly defending my choices. It requires staying in relationship across the tension.

This kind of transparency doesn’t mean being unchallengeable, it means being accountable in relationship. Being honest about my choices doesn’t let me off the hook. My colleague’s email was a gift, even though it hurt. Being called to account is part of how I stay awake, how I stretch toward what I’m missing, how I see what I’ve missed. I need that push, that discomfort, that invitation to reconsider my priorities.

A self-differentiated response isn’t “leave me alone, I’m doing my best.” It’s “I hear you. I’m wrestling with this. Here’s where I am right now and why. I’m willing to be challenged on this. And I’m still going to make my own decision about where I show up.”

It’s not easy work, holding multiple truths at once. The call to grow beyond my current commitments, and the grace to acknowledge I’m doing triage with resources that will never be enough. The invitation to stretch further, and the recognition that I’m a finite being making finite choices.

This isn’t the only way to manage scarcity. But it might be better than what I’ve been doing, which is pretending scarcity doesn’t exist while quietly burning out, feeling ashamed, and keeping all my impossible calculations hidden where no one can see them.

I’m working on articulating the actual principles that guide my triage. If folks are interested, I’ll share those principles in an upcoming post.

And I’m curious: How are you managing this? What does your triage look like? What helps you navigate the gap between infinite need and finite capacity without burning out or shutting down? I’d love to hear how others are working through this impossible math.

I'll leave you with a prayer reminder I’ve written for myself:

Let me rest in being but one thread in this shimmering web,
no need to fail at being whole damn loom.
Let me work my corner with love and ferocity,
trusting interdependence over performance,
grace over guilt,
the knowledge that I don’t have to be everywhere
to be faithful anywhere at all.

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Support This Work

If this resonated with you, I have a favor to ask.

I’m running a Kickstarter for GlitterBlessed, a collection of 60+ blessings, prayers, and sacred poetry written by and for the LGBTQ+ community. It’s work that comes directly from wrestling with the questions in this post: How do we show up? How do we sustain ourselves when everything’s burning? How do we choose love and resistance when need feels infinite and capacity feels so small?

In a time when our existence is being legislated against, when trans kids are targeted, when families like mine are told our love is dangerous, we need sacred words that affirm our holiness.

GlitterBlessed features 13 contributors offering blessings for bodies as holy places of change, gender euphoria, coming out after 40, breaking points, daily PrEP as defiance, building queer futures, and so much more.

Campaign ends November 6th. Books ship by November 20th.

If you’ve got capacity to back this, I’d be honored. If you’re doing your own triage right now, I see you. No shame, just invitation. Okay?

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