Sixty years ago when I still had my gall bladder, every now and then it would send my whole body into terribly painful spasms, usually at night after the wrong meal. These attacks would last for several hours, and then they would ease off. There was no better feeling than the relief I felt that allowed me to fall asleep. Usually the next morning I would recall those painful hours without having to relive them.
Now that the dawn has broken and things have begun to open up, it may be time to reflect on the painful year through which we have just slogged. For the 300 of us who live in my intentional community there is so much for which to be thankful. But while we were in the claws of the virus, we all complained about something. Community life was shattered. We could not even visit our closest friends. We lugged our meals home in plastic containers. Every bench on the campus has a posted sign limiting its users to a single person. Wives or husbands in our skilled nursing facility could not communicate except through a closed set of windows. Zoom defined what few meetings there were. We could not leave the campus and no one was allowed in. We had not seen our relatives and closest friends for over a year.
While our administration had taken a very conservative posture and may have been overly cautious, we cannot complain. We have been safe. There has not been a single death nor a virus driven hospitalization. The few cases we had were not severe. And now we are 100% vaccinated.
But hold on! I have been strengthened day after day by my reliance on my wife Wendy. I indeed have been a lucky duck, but so many others were isolated and alone and have not yet recovered from that lonely horror. When I was a parish minister, at the end of our congregational worship service, instead of a traditional benediction, I would often say, “Be very kind to one another for most of us are fighting a hard battle.” As I’d look out over the congregation I knew the truth of that observation. Mrs. G had just been diagnosed with cancer. Mr. W had lost his job. Mr. A’s plant had declared bankruptcy. Ms. J was seriously depressed. Mr. S had begun to realize that not only had his memory slipped, but he was also slowly losing his mental sharpness. J’s relationship had crashed. On and on it went, and as pastor I knew about many of those burdens.
While the pandemic has eased for now, like yesterday’s tornado it has left a path of destruction. There are businesses that will never recover and jobs that will never come back. Young people may have lost a whole year’s education. Some churches will not survive, and some relationships may have dissolved. Most of us know about someone who has died. No shot in the arm will diminish the pain resulting from that devastating year.
Eliot Rosewater, the hero in Kurt Vonnegut’s “novel, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater” was once asked to baptize twins born to a very simple community girl. He hadn’t the slightest notion what he might do, but in a conversation with his wife he said,“I’ll go over to her shack and say, Hello babies. Welcome to earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of babies. God damn it, you’ve got to be kind”
That’s it. This year and every year, in the midst of a pandemic or out of it, there’s just one rule, you’ve got to be kind.
No comments:
Post a Comment