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I was young and early in my career, eager to prove myself and terrified of being perceived as being anything but in total control of my charge. I was not at all happy to be outside of the walls of the school ... I did not want to be walking to church.
This is the hardest part of the pandemic for me. It feels like a personal hour of darkness.
There is a subtle panic in her eyes: she is trying to read me, trying to understand what it is I could want from her, but she picks up nothing at all from my best encouraging face.
Being part of the Body of Christ means feeling pain when parts of the Body are not in alignment, and in such a large and diverse Body this will always be the case.
Currently we can feel as though we are trapped in our homes. However, there is a window out of self-isolation into the experience of many others; those who must always do life at a slower pace.
During the time of COVID-19, many of us are experiencing solitude or the loss of communal, in-person worship in new ways. For some, this might bring on existential questions and struggles with doubt. I hope that these spiritual practices will help others in the ways that they have helped me.
While in some ways the COVID-19 pandemic is unifying the community around the globe, in others it is legitimating archaic values and hierarchies.
During this season of forced and mutual deprivation, when our consolations are taken from us one by one and we are continually and graphically reminded of the mortality of our species, I turn to the men I support for wisdom and guidance.
These men, despite their depths of hard-won wisdom and delightful companionship, are well-accustomed to strangers keeping their distance in public places. The conditions we ironically bemoan on social media are barely distinguishable from how they have spent most of the days of their lives. They are old pros at quarantine, and they are teaching me.
In Romans 8, Saint Paul tells us that the whole creation groans in labour pains, waiting for the redemption of the body. We too groan in yearning. We long for an end to the suffering, the tedium, the frustration at incomplete solutions…
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