Jamais Cascio introduced the framework of BANI in 2018; I’ve been learning about it in the past couple of years, but he writes that

I first developed BANI in mid 2018. Before the pandemic. Before the attempted insurrection in the United States, and just before the election of Bolsonaro in Brazil. Well before the invasion of Ukraine. Before you could make deepfake videos on your phone. Before world leaders finally admitted that massive wildfires and heatwaves and floods and storms that had become commonplace were driven by global warming. Before all of that, yet we could still see chaos everywhere.

BANI, if you haven’t come across it, stands for Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible. It addresses the unpredictability of our current historical climate. Ironically, as a framework, it appears to predict the increasing (galloping?) elements of BANI that we recognize all too well.

How does BANI translate into prayer? I have no idea of Cascio’s spirituality. But he does say this:

BANI is not a magic wand to reveal solutions. Arguably, most of the kinds of system breaks that BANI encompasses don’t actually have solutions, at least not in the conventional sense. We can look for responses and, better yet, adaptations.

So when I’m asked about what can be done to withstand the chaos of a BANI world, I go to human elements and behaviors like resilience, empathy, improvisation, and intuition. The chaos of BANI doesn’t come from changes in a geophysical system or some such, it comes from a human inability to fully understand what to do when pattern-seeking and familiar explanations no longer work.

For people of faith, there is one reliable place to turn when human understanding no longer works. Hence this prayer:

Dear God,

This world is anxious. Your church is anxious. We are worried and distracted by many things.[1] But let us cast all of our anxiety on you, because you care for us.[2] May we be anxious only for the coming of your reign, for your will to be done on earth as in heaven.

This world is nonlinear, as are you: omnipresent, omni-chronological, without beginning or end. Help us to remember that as labyrinthine as this life gets, we cannot be lost as our origin and end are in you.

This world is brittle, and so are we. When we are shattered, let us dedicate each and every fragment to you, for in you is our hope of resurrection.

This world is incomprehensible, but then so is your peace, passing our understanding.[3] May we find our rest, our wisdom, our peace in you.

Amen.

[1] Luke 10:41

[2] 1 Peter 5:7

[3] Philippians 4:7