As 2022 unrolls, there are certain daily habits I will continue to cultivate: eating home made granola for breakfast; taking a hot shower to make sure I’m awake; wearing comfortable clothes, even on work days (no ties or suits, unless there’s a funeral); working on a class I teach, a project I coordinate or household chores; walking outside (at least a mile); sharing a jigsaw puzzle project with my wife; morning and afternoon tea time; checking email and Facebook; reading fiction before bedtime (there’s more than enough non-fiction during daytime).
I’m increasingly aware I’ve added one more routine to the list in the last few weeks. I need to check the score in the newspaper every day. I’ve always followed the Bobcats and the Jackrabbits and like to know how they are doing; in basketball, or football, or soccer, or tennis, or whatever season it is.
But this is a different score. This is the statistic the S.D. Department of Health releases every day of the number of positive COVID cases in the state. The numbers of most interest to me are the new positive cases in Brookings County (the omicron variant is proving prolific here, with higher numbers than we have ever seen), and the number of state-wide deaths. The Health Department divides the deaths by age group. My group is generally the largest, but a surprising number have been occurring in the 40s and 50s. One death was listed the other day, tragically, in the 1-9 age group.
As an educator and a minister, I’ve always believed knowledge was preferable to ignorance. It’s not an option to close our eyes to what’s happening around us. At the same time, the awareness and uncertainty about tomorrow and the day after that, is taking a toll on the whole human community. Now scientists are telling us there are likely more variants to come, and one can see the increasing sense of depression and despair about the future.
In such uncertain times, what can be done? May I suggest three things I hope to make part of my daily habits as we enter into this third year of pandemic perdition.
The first suggestion is to focus more on our own inner life. How is our spirit being sapped or strengthened by pandemic? We might ask ourselves questions like the following: how are we handling home and workplace complications; school closures and virtual learning; short staffing almost everywhere; empty supermarket shelves; extended separation from friends and family; travel difficulties? Or, we might ask, what are my dreams like? Am I fleeing frantically from something? And again, am I able to practice discernment in decision making or does the listing of advantages and disadvantages end up a miserable mixture?
If these questions resonate with us, perhaps we need to add a meditation or prayer time to our daily schedule. Perhaps we need a weekend away, someplace where nature rules and silence surrounds. Perhaps we need a fast, a time of feeding the spirit as we normally feed the body. Perhaps we need a regular virtual time with a community of like-minded souls that focuses and feeds us. Perhaps we need to cultivate more intensely our encounter with creativity: more music, more art, more good literature.
If our inner life is strong, we will manifest it in what we do. If we are right with our self, we will be able to get right with our neighbor. A pandemic requires concerted effort: to reason with the vaccine resistant; to move pharmaceuticals from profit making to vaccine sharing; to shift dollars from upgraded nuclear missiles to tests, masks and vaccines for all. If nothing else, the virus should be teaching us we are all in this together, worldwide. And you and I, in the richest country on the planet with the highest number of pandemic deaths in the world, could call our country to greatness in bringing it to an end.
Third, there is the opportunity for small kindnesses. Our action doesn’t have to be just that of citizens, focused on the larger problem. We can be available to the smaller needs of the everyday. We can recognize those who are trying to serve us, are doing so under new and difficult constraints.
A friend noted how she had to join the drive through line three times as her dinner order wasn’t ready until the third try. She was patient, recognizing they were short staffed. They were so grateful she didn’t send anger and hate their way, they gave her an extra treat.
Send your health care worker flowers. Shower your child’s teacher with signs of appreciation. Thank your police officer or fireman for their service. Honor those serving our seniors in care centers. Tip the waitress extra.
If our inner life is stable and our spirit strong, we will recognize our connections to the earth and each other.
And if we recognize those relationships and stand strong together, viruses will wither. We can stop the pandemic with kind deeds, civic action and cultivation of our inner life. All three produce Community with a capitol C.
