I wrote these thoughts out the day the Michigan governor announced the stay-at-home order. Now 97% of Americans are under a stay-at-home protocol. While we're beginning to adjust to a new normal, we're also still reeling in many ways and grappling with our new reality.
Personally, I don't really know exactly what to think of it all (especially the swirling politics). What I do know is that this is a time for love, kindness, trust, and generosity. It's a time for prayer (if you're a person of faith) and grieving with the suffering, for creativity and patience. I'm seeking to lean into those things, and so are most of the people that I know personally. And if we lean toward kindness together--if we lean towards each other--this can be a time of hope and renewal for our planet.
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| Bloodroot in Maybury State Park, Spring 2020 (a solitary quarantine walk) |
Exposed
3/23/2020
We feel these days deeply and painfully.
As though we are relearning something about ourselves and our existence:
life is fragile.
We are fragile.
This time, it’s not 4 airplanes and 3 crash scenes that remind us
suddenly
on a Tuesday morning
that we are fragile.
It’s not the news of the impending tsunami making landfall and claiming 230,000 lives.
It’s not an individual tragedy--a phone call with a diagnosis, discovery of an accidental overdose, a family disruption, a job loss--that we experience in isolation from those around us.
This.
This has come to all of us.
It is, at once, a sudden and a creeping thing.
It rose rapidly but lingers with uncertainty.
We cannot wrap our minds around it, because it is always shifting, changing, evolving.
The narrative keeps unfolding.
This is a virus.
And it’s established a monopoly on our TVs, radios, internet sources, social media feeds, and even our private conversations.
It’s become a household name. A global terror.
A pandemic.
And we are exposed.
Exposed to change.
Exposed to harm.
Exposed, yes, to a virus,
but, oh, so much more.
We are exposed
to our mortality,
to the vulnerability of our lives that, God knows, we tried so hard to make safe, secure, and comfortable.
We are exposed
to raw emotions (our own and others’),
to needs we cannot fathom,
to suffering we cannot alleviate,
to information we cannot make sense of,
to disruption we cannot evade.
We are exposed to our fragility.
This violent virus, microbial menace.
Today, the governor announced a stay-at-home protocol for the state of Michigan.
Some feel this as governmental overstepping; others, as too little, too late.
The diverse perspectives reiterate our tensions, our loss of control, the invasiveness of the whole situation.
We each respond in a different way. But we all respond, think, feel, something. After all, our lives are being invaded.
No one is immune
to this fragility,
our humanity.
We are reminded again.
By a microscopic organism.
Reminded that our precious lives are uncertain.
Reminded that we are fragile.
Reminded that we are human.
It is a good reminder:
we are all human.
Dear humans, let us love well.
