Sometimes it’s there, just below the surface. My mind is distracted, looking for the familiar, but knowing it won’t come from there. It’s something new.
A beautiful morning, or evening, outside, smelling cut grass, swooning in the start of spring. It seems like normal. But go to grab groceries and it hits: it’s eerie. Off. Something is not right. You can feel it.
We are all called to respond in our own ways. To stay home, yes, but also called to look differently, think differently, maybe to live and be differently. I’ve been trying to get my head around it.
Before COVID-19 arrived, Fr. Bill Ortt put out a Lenten challenge at Christ Church Easton: 1) Find a word that speaks to you; 2) choose a Bible verse that uses your word; 3) Memorize your verse and pray, meditate, reflect on your word/verse as a Lenten mantra of sorts; 4) Write your word on one of the small, wooden crosses the church gives out. And if you are inspired to, take a picture and share your cross-verse.
There have been some wholly wonderful responses. “Heal,” “light,” “love,” “pray,” “faith”–it’s been inspiring to see and read how people came to their word (or their word came to them) and what they are doing with the experience.
My word wasn’t there at first. Or it was, but I wasn’t listening.
As a church, when it was clear that we weren’t going to be gathering together for a time, we had to figure out what that meant; what it looked like; how to stay relevant, be there for people; how to continue to shine a light; how to connect; how to help people be hopeful. We had to do things differently.
We had to create something new. Or at least new to us. We moved our meetings, small groups, and prayer gatherings to ZOOM. Worship services (what would worship look like now?) to Facebook Live. And our music ministries became video artists–I stop every time I hear/watch “Hold Us Together,” “Stand in Your Love / Chain Breaker,” or “Be Still My Soul.” These are videos that have been viewed tens of thousands of times now on Facebook and shared widely. They strike a chord, they speak to hope and faith and love and connection. They weren’t a priority before social distancing, until they became one of the key ways to communicate. This is a time that is teaching us how to create, how to be differently, how to look at what’s important. And it’s not about adapting to a temporary predicament–it’s about moving toward, embracing something new.
I am fascinated by stories. As a writer, I read them, listen to them, think about them, and hope to share and tell them in new and interesting ways. But with between work, two teenage daughters, life, it’s not always easy to make time to write.
As I sat, prayed, reflected, my word, both professionally and personally was there all along: CREATE. And when I started looking through Bible verses, Isaiah practically smacked me upside the head:
“For I am about to create new heavens
Isaiah, 65:17
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.”
In this time, our time, maybe we are called to look at our lives with an eye towards creating better lives.
Maybe we are called to look at our personal and collective stories, and tell new ones.
If our world is necessarily knocked off its axis, perhaps we can look at how to get it spinning around love, kindness, community, sustainability, and creativity.
If I stay home, simply waiting, doing things as I’ve always done them, and at the other end of this pandemic, just shrug, and go back to business as usual, what have I learned or gained from the experience?
This isn’t meant to be some Pollyanna motivational speech. I know my shortcomings. I know I will be lazy, I will fall short, I will miss opportunities. I try to own my humanity, my flaws, and my mistakes. But the idea behind a word, a mantra, a verse to think, pray, reflect on, is what I set my eyes to–what I aim towards, what I strive for. And in the face of a global virus the world is responding to in ways that none of us have seen in our lifetimes, it is a legitimate time to look at our lives and think about where and how we are and where we want to be.
Each spring, I go back to Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” It’s become a way to enter the season of rebirth, of resurrection. And this year I am hit especially by his “O ME! O LIFE!” in the same space and way that Robin Williams quoted it in Dead Poets Society.
We are here. We exist. It didn’t have to be, but it is. And in life’s powerful play, we may contribute a verse. That is what we create. But it’s up to us.
I want to wake up open to what it is God is creating in the world and creating in me.
“Create in my a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.”
(Psalm 51:10-12)
