A Word from Laura: Listening for Grace Notes
The spiritual toll of the pandemic weighs heavily on my own spirit these days. This Atlantic article on the “intuition nightmare” describes America’s response to COVID-19 in the shape of a death spiral. Our leaders (one in particular whose name rhymes with “dump” and “slump”) have led us down a trail using magical thinking, false dichotomies, theatricality and moralism, to the point of inevitable burn-out. Death rates continue significantly higher among health care workers, Black Americans, Indigenous people, and the Latinx community.
How are we to continue without being overcome? This week I’ve heard from some of you who are mourning loved ones and unable to travel to be with friends and family. Others of us are struggling to keep our children at home and in virtual school, while others are trying to figure out long-term work futures. Finding meaning in all of this seems a cruel venture, absurd at the very least.
Two notes of grace have spoken to me this week. One of you emailed me after last week’s “Flunking Fall,” kindly reminding me that we are truly in a pandemic. And in pandemics, every day we can open our eyes is a success. As living proof of these words, another of you emailed in the midst of potential overwhelm with your children, extended family, and work to let me know how the stories of your ancestors’ struggles have given you perspective on your own, and allowed you to see the powerful, simple blessings for which you are grateful. None of us who can read these words are “flunking.” Success is simply being alive!
The second note came from Paul’s letter to the Romans (14:8), “whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” This belief that we belong to God, in life and in death, is central to Presbyterians, reminding us that our lives and purpose are bound up in the life and purposes of the Eternal One. God calls me and you to invest our lives beyond our current circumstances.
I heard echoes of this second note of belonging to God as some of Western’s leaders worked to rearticulate financial priorities for our church, given the new realities we face, as a church outside of our building. As others have reclaimed our call to anti-racism, specifically as a congregation becoming more racially and culturally diverse, they do so as part of God’s larger call to a human community that celebrates our cultural differences. As we continue to connect with and care for friends through Western, we affirm that we belong to a transcendent reality.
It’s a reality of community based in God’s love and justice our world still needs. At the end of the Atlantic article, the author warns that COVID-19 , like poverty, racism or school shootings, may become “another unacceptable thing that America comes to accept.”
Remembering that as long as we are living and breathing, we are not failing, and that we belong to God, serving purposes larger than our own, may we find renewed strength and hope. May we not only resist habituation to the horrors of our time, but discover who God continues to call us to be and to become, whatever the days may bring.
Laura