Good Lord, Deliver Us

“From lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire, and flood; from plague, pestilence, and famine: Good Lord, deliver us …” The Great Litany

For the past several weeks, I’ve been sheltering in place in accordance with the Governor’s suggestions and, more recently, Executive Order.

I know many are sick of hearing about this viral pandemic, and I am certainly no doctor or scientist. My task, as a layman, is to listen to the experts and do as they suggest. While I am free to ignore their “advice,” it seems to be as unwise as ignoring the advice of the parachute instructor who suggests putting on the chute before leaping from the plane. Yes, you can ignore that advice, but you do so at your own peril.

As an introvert, I found the thought of self-isolating quite inviting. It would be a glass of ice-cold water on a hot summer’s day – refreshing beyond belief. But the reality has been anything but warm, cool, or refreshing. While I enjoy tumbling around the world wide web and reading the news or a good book, or spending time puttering around the house taking care of all those nagging little projects I’d put off until I had time to get to them – well, I’ve got the time and I’ve gotten to a lot of them, but I’ve found isolation hasn’t lived up to its promises.

Yes, I’m an introvert, but like every human being, I crave human contact. I went to one of the warehouse stores the other day to pick up supplies, and the people gathered were in a long line, maintaining the appropriate six foot space between carts and/or individuals, but boy was it a glum lot. If I hadn’t been seeing it in full living color, I would have sworn it should have been a black and white snapshot of Depression-era soup-lines. There was no chattering or bantering. Each seemed alone in their thoughts.

Buying a few essential perishables from the local grocer (bread and milk), I found myself separated from the clerk by a beautiful Plexiglas sneeze guard. Although I could see through it and hear her from around it, I found the experience to be very annoying. I don’t know why; the bullet-resistant glass we have grown accustomed to at our local banks is the norm, but a physical barrier between the customer and the dispenser of life-goods just seems almost immoral. I found myself talking around the glass to the cashier rather than through it just to delete as much as was humanly possible the artificiality of the tinny sound I was hearing when directly behind the glass.

I need others; I miss church.

I know the church is not the building where we gather as a community of faith to hear the Gospel and share the Sacraments. I know that we have been dispersed for the common good (and re-discovering the sometimes forgotten truth that church is seldom more church than when it is in the world operating beyond those cloistered spaces we’ve grown to love and appreciate).

I have been unsuccessful at accessing my own parish’s virtual worship on Sunday mornings despite being generally proficient in this digital age (and I am teachable – I think), it is not the same as sitting in the church with the warmth and vitality of the body of faithful surrounding me – what we refer to as the Real Presence of Christ.

I am doing what I am doing for the good of the community, and I think that is the way God would want it. This crisis, like every crisis and storm, will pass. We will learn things from it so that perhaps when the next storm makes land-fall we will be better prepared to handle it. That’s my hope.

In the meantime, I look around and realize I have a solid roof over my head; I have food in freezer and pantry; I have power, heat, water, and lights; without needing to resort to hoarding, I have sufficient paper goods to meet my needs for quite some time. Despite the threat of pestilence and the reality of loneliness, I am alive, I am well, and I am blessed.

The day will come when tears of sorrow will cease and joyful hugs will replace them here in this, our valley. Until then, keep the faith (and share it, too).