Overheard a conversation among a small group of people this week. “Happy New Year,” says one person, “at least we know 2022 will be better than the last two…” A noticeable and sustained pause descends on the group. The person speaking, picking up on this, haltingly says, “Well, at least let’s hope.”
“Well at least let’s hope.” That was as good a summary as I have experienced when it comes to describing this year thus far. Other conversations from this week come to mind, like when we had a sobering meeting with the church’s Public Health Team, and heard their advice, not unexpected, to go back to virtual-only worship for a time, no choir rehearsals for a time, no in person religious education for a time. This latest chapter in the Covid saga is just beginning.
Friends, let me tell you that I hoped when we resumed in person attendance last November that these virtual-only services would be in our rear-view mirror at the church. I thought that the worst of this pandemic was behind us. And indeed, it may be depending on how you look at it. And still the first days of this new year have felt like a big setback. I hadn’t appreciated until folks were back here in person just how much energy it takes to do church without at least some of you present. It takes more imagination to think about all of you out there. Seeing your faces in person just makes it a whole lot easier. Please know you are missed.
This Covid time has been a long journey. Remember back at the beginning when it started? Now, almost two years ago? I recall our conversations on staff in those early days. How long would the shutdown be? Two weeks? Maybe three? Certainly not more than a month and certainly we’ll back by Easter, at the time a little over a month away. Easter became Memorial Day. And then it started to become more clear. No, it was going to be a lot longer. Maybe the whole next church year longer. I recall how it felt as that reality began to set in.
The year came. We made it through that first set of winter holidays. Not easy, but for one year we did it. That was a relief. With the new year came vaccines. Now we are on the home stretch, I remember thinking. As the weeks went by more and more people became eligible for shots. There was light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. By that summer—last summer—it felt like things were opening up. We had our service in Pioneer Courthouse Square. It was great, even in the rain, to have us all gathered together. That being together would help us get to the fall when we’d be back in business and coming back.
Only it didn’t quite go as planned. A new variant emerged. Plans for in-person were put on hold. It was November when that finally happened. And it proved to be a slower coming back than we had expected. Many of us, after so many months of not being in crowds, we understandably being cautious. But I recall still being hopeful. With time things would continue to come back. And yes, they have.
And then came this most recent variant.
I wanted to recount our pandemic journey to remind us of just how long this has been. That the two-year mark is just a couple months away. I’m still trying to get my head around that. Part of it is to remember just how long two years out of our lives is. Think about how much a child grows and changes in the course of that time. Of course, I don’t know about you but the very sense of time has gotten distorted for me. More than once I’ve found myself trying to figure out if something happened pre-Covid or not and it quickly gets kind of blurry.
Yes, it feels as if our sense of time has changed. And maybe it is just important to note how our lives have changed in so many ways.
Now I don’t want to lose sight of the positives this morning. I don’t want to lose sight of the vaccines that most of us have been privileged to receive and more recently the boosters. I don’t want to lose sight of how this time has made space for ways that our lives are better, maybe a little less complicated. I don’t want to lose sight of the things we realized we didn’t really need all that much. And I hope we carry some of those learnings forward with us.
And I don’t want to lose sight of how many of us can count ourselves among the privileged in ways that perhaps we haven’t counted ourselves in the past. How things that we may have taken for granted we no longer take for granted. I don’t want to lose sight of the privilege many of us have had to work from home or to mostly stay at home. I don’t want to forget the debt of gratitude owed to those who haven’t had those same privileges I have enjoyed.
But with all of that said, I also want to make a space to remind ourselves too of the losses in this time. Deaths and illness in our circles. Time we haven’t had with loved ones. Time we haven’t been able to do things we may have dreamed about. And some less tangible things as well. Like our very sense of safety in the world. Just when is it safe to come out and when is it not?
In the last month or so with this latest variant, I have sensed a kind of shared awareness of all the losses, a kid of collective shared experience of how life has changed and how it might well be changed for the long term. How certain things won’t come back. I think that that too is important to recognize.
Words again of Amanda Gorman:
Mourning, we come to mend,
Withered, we come to weather,
Torn, we come to tend,
Battered, we come to better.[1]
Over the holiday break, on one of the gray days we’ve had lately, I found myself looking at the bookshelf in my office at home. And I found myself drawn to one book that included the phrase “Dark Nights of the Soul.”
That phrase “dark night of the soul” comes from the Spanish mystic and poet John of the Cross who lived in the 16th Century. John was a member Carmelite Christian religious order. John advocated for reforms within his order and so many members were against it that he was imprisoned for several months. During that time he wrote a series of poems and one of them was entitled “Dark Night of the Soul.” He wrote about the night of the senses and the night of the spirit. Through time that phrase has come to describe all kinds of ways humans have struggled. It could be in the midst of loss or illness. It could in the midst of a life change. It could come from some global disruption that has affected all of us. It could be called depression. It could generally be a time when we have felt some deep, deep sense of loss. When we have lost our grounding. The dark night may be psychological. The dark night may be deeply spiritual.
Many of us, I expect, have known those nights, whatever the particulars may be. They are times when we have felt lost. Times when we have been pulled inward. Times when we didn’t know how we would find our way. And how we have made our way through—or haven’t made our way through. But all of those things have shaped us. And we bring all of those learnings with us into this present moment of time.
We are learning
That though we weren’t ready for this,
We have been readied by it.
We steadily vow that no matter
How we are weighed down,
We must always pave a way forward.
Writer Wayne Dosick is a rabbi who tells the story of losing his home in a fire a number of years ago. He and his wife were away and they return to a house that has been completely destroyed in a wild fire.
They try to take in the magnitude of their loss. Dosick writes about going through the stages of anger and of grief. He talks about wondering where their possessions went. They have a hard time imagining how most of them somehow have gone into thin air, consumed in fire. At first as they sift through the rubble all they see is ash. But as they look more closely they come to see what remains of some of the objects consumed in the fire. They come to see how this thing is now fused with this other thing. They come to see that at least some of what they knew is still there, just in another form. They come to see how some things they knew in one form are beautiful in some wholly different way.
Dosick writes how for him, everything we know best, everything we love most is made up of what he calls God-energy. That there is something more than the object itself when we give it power and meaning. And that that could be said of the relationships in our lives, too. That some of our own energy is invested in the thing or in that relationship and when that is gone there is a part of us that is gone as well. But how we can also find meaning even when it would seem that something has changed form.[2]
And what about this time that we have in? Each chapter, each surge? Each loss? Each learning? Our sense of ourselves and the ways we have changed or not? What it is that has been lost? What of life do we now experience in some new form? In some new shape? And how are we in relationship with all of that, with the world?
We are learning
That though we weren’t ready for this,
We have been readied by it.
We steadily vow that no matter
How we are weighed down,
We must always pave a way forward.
How is it that we are learning our way forward? I know in talking with many of you that it has not been an easy path. This has not been an easy time. And I expect we have perhaps learned some things about ourselves and how it is we each do manage—or not. How we have learned about strengths that we maybe didn’t know or that we had forgotten about ourselves. How maybe we have come to know once again ways that we have been blessed in our lives. Or maybe to honor just how much we have struggled.
This hope is our door, our portal.
Even if we never get back to normal,
Someday we can venture beyond it,
To leave the known and take the first steps.
So let us not return to what was normal,
But reach toward what is next.
Those moments we missed
Are now these moments we make,
The moments we meet,
And our hearts, once all together beaten,
Now all together beat.
One of the paradoxes of this time of isolation has been a new-found realization of just how interconnected our lives are. And hopefully as we recognize our own vulnerability we can also come to see how others share that vulnerability. How we are all vulnerable together.
There is much in this time that would have us feeling isolated and alone. There is much that would have us feeling weary right now. There is much that would want us to see the world through the lens of scarcity and fear.
Our job, I think, is to make space to see ourselves in relation to the whole and to recognize just how tied together our lives and the lives of those around us are. Our task is to first recognize that and then to move out of that place. But to also know that that path may not be easy. This likely won’t be the last variant. Just what all of this looks like is not at all easy to predict. The truth is that getting to where we want and need to be will take time. And to also remind ourselves that that place will look different. And further that through it all we need to stay in relationship with others.
Our spiritual theme this month is accountability. Accountability. It is perhaps in times like this that we realize more deeply the layers of accountability—to ourselves, to those closest to us, to our communities and to something larger. What is being asked of us and how it is we are to live? And does that something larger include our accountability to others who may not have been on the list before? Might a lesson from this time be a recognition of just how interdependent we all are? Might a lesson from this time be an ever-widening circle of concern?
What was cursed, we will cure.
What was plagued, we will prove pure.
Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,
Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,
Where we weren’t aware, we’re now awake;
How our hearts all together do beat.
We can never know what tomorrow will bring. We certainly can’t know what the next stage, the next surge in this pandemic will bring. But on this day, even now amid these gray days of winter, may we find hope and promise in the turning of the year. May we find hope and promise in at least the possibility of some larger turning. May this time of disruption be a time when we notice things that perhaps we didn’t notice before. In that noticing, in that living, may we find our way.
In closing:
Come, look up with kindness yet,
For even solace can be sourced from sorrow.
We remember, not just for the sake of yesterday,
But to take on tomorrow.
Come over, join this day just begun.
For wherever we come together,
We will forever overcome.
May that be our hope this day and in all the days to come. Amen.
Let us pray. Great spirit of life and of love. Remind us of all the blessings we know. Remind us of who we are, of all the places and people who are part of us, the communities who have helped us along the way. And remind us, spirit, amid surges and outbreaks, amid fears and weariness, of how are do not make this journey alone. Hold us. Guide us. Bless us, spirit. Amen.
Benediction
Remember, good people, that through these complicated and difficult and amazing times that you do no journey alone. Live with purpose. Live with love.
[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/amanda-gorman-new-poem-new-days-lyric-1276981/
[2] “When Life Hurts: A Book of Hope” by Wayne Dosick, Harper San Francisco, 1998.
Topics: Accountability