Good morning…
“Who can use the term ‘gone viral’ now without shuddering a little?” begins the intriguing article Margit Steinholt sent me from Norway, alongside the photo above capturing the snowy view from her home. “Who can look at anything any more — a door handle, a cardboard carton, a bag of vegetables — without imagining it swarming with those unseeable, undead, unliving blobs dotted with suction pads waiting to fasten themselves on to our lungs? Who can think of kissing a stranger, jumping on to a bus or sending their child to school without feeling real fear? Who can think of ordinary pleasure and not assess its risk? Who among us is not a quack epidemiologist, virologist, statistician and prophet? Which scientist or doctor is not secretly praying for a miracle? Which priest is not — secretly, at least — submitting to science? And even while the virus proliferates, who could not be thrilled by the swell of birdsong in cities, peacocks dancing at traffic crossings and the silence in the skies?”
I am struck by how connecting coronavirus has become. Our wider community of companionship is the whole world. Social distancing has sparked more creative intimacy, igniting for us the immediate opportunity of every moment. Together, all together, we are experiencing life and death, hope and heartache, loss of freedom and renewal of what is real, essential, sustaining. It is as if this virus continues to fall like snow upon God’s whole globe, covering what was, hiding from our sight what will eventually be.
“Times of dormancy and deep rest are essential for all living things,” says author Parker Palmer. I go to my shelf to retrieve his beloved book Let Your Life Speak, a book we learned from in our living room classes a few semesters ago. I remember Parker writing about the great gifts of winter. So I find my way to page 101, and I read these wise words: “Despite all appearance, of course, nature is not dead in winter – it has gone underground to renew itself and prepare for spring. Winter is a time when we are admonished, and even inclined, to do the same for ourselves.”
I turn the page to read on: “Our inward winters take many forms – failure, betrayal, depression, death. But every one of them, in my experience, yields to the same advice: ‘The winters will drive you crazy until you learn to get out in them.’ Until we enter boldly into the fears we most want to avoid, those fears will dominate our lives. But when we walk directly into them – protected from frostbite by the warm garb of friendship or inner discipline or spiritual guidance – we can learn what they have to teach us. Then we discover once again that the cycle of the seasons is trustworthy and life-giving, even in the most dismaying season of all.”
As we look out of our homes this Easter Monday morn, some of us are still stuck in a wearying winter and some of us are surrounded by the springing forth of green growth on each extended branch. Yet all of us breathe in the very same truth. This season of “sheltering in place” will pass soon enough and the great gifts of this sequestering will peek into perspective as together we discover once again: the cycle of God’s seasons is trustworthy and life-giving.
What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations… All the creatures look expectantly to you to give them their meals on time. You come, and they gather around; you open your hand and they eat from it. If you turned your back, they’d die in a minute — Take back your Spirit and they die, revert to original mud; Send out your Spirit and they spring to life — the whole countryside in bloom and blossom. The glory of God—let it last forever! Let God enjoy his creation! (Psalm 104:24-31, MSG).
…Sue…
