Musings in a Time of Crisis XIII

Life itself is a gift.

Every moment, we can cultivate deeper awareness 

of the blessing of simply being alive. . . .

Br. David Steindl-Rast

[...] an arc of almost,

a wisp of becoming

a wand—

tiny enough to change me.

~ Kimberly Blaeser

"The Way We Love Something Small"

_________________________

It seems that day by day it grows, my list of friends who have become infected with the coronavirus, are hospitalized with Covid-19, have been discharged to recover at home, or have suffered the misfortune to become reinfected. 

My friends live all over America, some in the hot spots, some not, many in the big cities along the coasts, some in what we still call "country" or "the hinterlands," a few abroad. I might never know if some of my friends make it through to that "other side" we talk about, because they represent all the family there is, though always they are and will remain part of our family of friends.

For many of us in that family of friends, there are "underlying conditions" of concern: age, immuno-compromised health conditions, heart ailments . . . if you can name it, it's probably a factor.

Add to all those health issues the mitigating, unchangeable-for-now factors of life during the pandemic, those things enlarged while having to isolate or be in quarantine: loss of jobs, too little income or savings, living alone, living distant from biological family, having relatives who work in hospitals or other medical or healthcare facilities, our children's mental health, our own mental health as that first list lengthens by the day.

Some of us say, "Thank God for FaceBook and Twitter and Instagram" and spend much too much time in our virtual worlds whose value is to connect us. Some of us make lists of things to do for the sake of routine. Some of us even accomplish them. Promises are kept. Donations made.

What we never stop is that endless stream of email we try to manage.

Some of us do our exercises, hold gatherings at Zoom, pray by phone, send check-in cards. Many of us turn to keeping daily gratitude journals, writing posts for blogs we thought we'd long ago given up, escape into fiction books, read and write poems because #PoemsSave, find beautiful art to look again and again throughout our day because #ArtCanHelp.

Perhaps more than we realize we look for words other than "Good-bye."

Some of us do all those things and still cry out, especially in the hours when our now-longer daylight begins to fade, in the blueness of those hours when we're alone and cannot sleep, having nothing more we can do than meditate our thoughts away. 

Or pray.

Faith either becomes stronger or is given up on. I feel my own grow stronger and yet . . . It is the "and yet" I struggle to keep at bay in the blue hours.

But I also remind myself, we have this: the season of spring, of renewal, and as I watch life rebeginning, I look to the end of this, our Holy Week, which culminates in Easter.