I haven’t written here since March 3rd. I’ve been trying to avoid polarizing stuff, but it’s hard, and the COVID-19 Pandemic has begun to take its toll on me. In early to mid February I was hanging with a friend and he asked me if I was worried about it. I wasn’t. Everything I had heard from US officials was that I didn’t need to be, and we had seen scares like this before that turned out to be serious but not the crisis many feared and which we are experiencing today. By early March I began to be a little concerned. By about March 13th I had cancelled our Church’s annual Spring musical and in-person worship for at least two weeks. It didn’t take long to realize we were in this for the long haul. The adaptive changes were kind of energizing at first as I and our leadership began to shift our way of being a community. Shortly after that, Easter loomed and that bred a whole other kind of energy, as we sought to find ways to make QuarantEaster a meaningful experience. But since then things have changed. 

First of all leadership at the highest levels of government has seemed to do nothing but breed confusion and anxiety nationwide. The crisis continues but now cries to open grow increasingly louder. We are in unprecedented space, with the stakes higher than anything I’ve experienced in my life, and it seems that both no one and everyone knows what the real story is. All I know is this: We’ve taken the most severe efforts to stop/slow the spread of a virus in 100 years and we still have 70,000+ dead in two months, with numbers on the rise in many parts of the nation. 

But what’s really starting to wear on me is this: There is a massive disconnect and degree of confusion about what the next few months should hold. I’m being told that I should be working on a re-open plan for our church building, while numbers rise and guidelines seem to change daily. I’m being told by some that we may be in this to some degree for another year, and I’m hearing that it may be just until June. Minnesota righties are rallying for Minnesota to open and to be liberated from a tyrannical Governor, while Minnesota lefties are now critiquing Gov. Walz for moving too fast on “turning the dials up”. While I’m being told I should work on a re-open plan, I feel like I should be working on a long range online community plan. What the right thing to do seems as invisible and elusive as the virus itself. 

All the while 70,000+ Americans are dead, and here’s where I hit my breaking point: Of those 70,000 a significant portion are from long term care facilities, and for some reason people seem to be taking comfort in that, as it’s often followed with “we can protect our nursing homes”. Friends, with all due respect, we already didn’t protect our long term congregant care facilities! And how do we think the virus got there in the first place? Was grandma out clubbing or spring breaking on Florida beaches? No, the virus was brought there from an outside source. The only way to open and “protect” our nursing homes is to put their staff on full quarantine, which brings a hole other host of problems. It’s one thing to be held at home, it’s quite another to be forced to be held elsewhere. Our elders are highly at risk here. Highly. At. Risk. No one seems to deny this, but (and I do not see this as hyperbole) we still seem to be willing to offer them up on the altar of freedom and economic growth. I, for one, am not.

I am not claiming to know what the answer is. I have no idea. I am confused. But what seems to be true is the most sure thing in protecting lives right now is to continue to “Stay At Home”. But of course this does bring with it dire economic consequences. And that issue, to me, exposes just how dangerously fragile and flawed our economic system is. I’ve said this before and it’s never been more clear to me than it is now: We have the resources to house, feed, clothe, care for, and educate everybody. We just choose not to. The housing exists. The food is there. The systems to keep the supply chain moving are there. The doctors and nurses are there, even furloughed. We have what we need. We just lack a system and the vision to deploy the resources fairly and equitably, and in order to save this fragile and flawed and inequitable economy, we are willing to sacrifice our elders and most vulnerable. Again, I do not think this is hyperbole. I have thought long and hard about this, over many a sleepless and weeping night. 

I’m at my wits end with it. I don’t want to go back to normal anymore. I just want people to stop suffering and dying. I want there to be clear and unified, not muddied and contradictory, messages from the top about what to do. I don’t even want this to hurry up and be over. The hurry only breeds more anxiety in me. I want us to slow down and breath, and simply watch out for one another. If we could just die to the idols of economic growth and political power, we could slow down and really see one another and do what we need to do to care for one another and protect lives. We could. We have what we need. We just need to slow down, breathe, and trust that though the storm may be fierce and long, if we huddle together we can weather it. And, well, you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. 

With that, I’m going to shut it all off for a bit at watch the LG Twins game out of Seoul South Korea. You see, South Korea and the US had their first reported cases on the same day, but South Korea responded quickly and boldy, and they’re playing baseball now. Go Twins.