Love in the Time of Coronavirus
My sister and I have been glued to the news for the past 48 hours, with few breaks. Unless you're living under a rock, you know that we're in the middle of a global pandemic -- and America is finally seeing community spread of COVID-19. I am in multiple high-risk categories for this type of illness (asthma, hypertension, immune-system abnormalities). Last Sunday, I stayed home from services; this Sunday, I'll likely do the same.
For a lifelong asthmatic, this illness is profoundly terrifying. Regular colds and flus have sent me to the hospital before, gasping for breath.
As a result, I've spent a good chunk of spring break in my apartment, isolating -- although I did go enjoy a hike on Monday with my sister in Eisenhower Park, which is on the north side of my city (San Antonio, Texas).
This wasn't the 40-day journey I was expecting this year.
Tonight, however, I spent the evening with my boyfriend and his children, plus a few friends. The entire time, my heart raced every time one of the children open-mouth laughed or exhaled too forcefully at the table, or touched their mouths. Later in the night, as I held J. in my arms, I wondered, silently, what if one of us is already ill and simply isn't displaying symptoms yet? Are these moments of closeness a mistake? Is one of us accidentally dooming the other, via a loving gesture, like a kiss?
These are hard thoughts and emotions to process.
It's even harder to know how to pray. It's not that the pandemic tests my faith -- at least, not in a fundamental sense. Pandemics have happened before, throughout history.
It's simply that I do not know how to approach God, in light of this current disease wave. There's a part of me that simply wants to ask for protection, to whisper in God's ear how scared I am. But how selfish a prayer is that? And why should I ask or expect special divine treatment when so many others are suffering and perishing? I'm not exceptional. Neither is my country or region of the globe.
Iran is digging burial pits for its dead. Italy is virtually shut down; they lost 200 people in one day yesterday. It all sounds like something out of a history textbook chapter on the Spanish Flu or Bubonic Plague, not a thing that I should be reading on NPR's website in the present day.
The grief -- worldwide -- is more than I can fathom.
I don't know what to say in the face of it, or what to ask. But perhaps the best prayer response in this situation isn't making a request at all, but simply the act of listening -- taking a moment each day to check in with God's presence, God's love, God's voice -- then doing what I can, from my limited position, to help stop community spread as best I can.
At least, that's what I'm going to go with, for now.
For a lifelong asthmatic, this illness is profoundly terrifying. Regular colds and flus have sent me to the hospital before, gasping for breath.
As a result, I've spent a good chunk of spring break in my apartment, isolating -- although I did go enjoy a hike on Monday with my sister in Eisenhower Park, which is on the north side of my city (San Antonio, Texas).
This wasn't the 40-day journey I was expecting this year.
Tonight, however, I spent the evening with my boyfriend and his children, plus a few friends. The entire time, my heart raced every time one of the children open-mouth laughed or exhaled too forcefully at the table, or touched their mouths. Later in the night, as I held J. in my arms, I wondered, silently, what if one of us is already ill and simply isn't displaying symptoms yet? Are these moments of closeness a mistake? Is one of us accidentally dooming the other, via a loving gesture, like a kiss?
These are hard thoughts and emotions to process.
It's even harder to know how to pray. It's not that the pandemic tests my faith -- at least, not in a fundamental sense. Pandemics have happened before, throughout history.
It's simply that I do not know how to approach God, in light of this current disease wave. There's a part of me that simply wants to ask for protection, to whisper in God's ear how scared I am. But how selfish a prayer is that? And why should I ask or expect special divine treatment when so many others are suffering and perishing? I'm not exceptional. Neither is my country or region of the globe.
Iran is digging burial pits for its dead. Italy is virtually shut down; they lost 200 people in one day yesterday. It all sounds like something out of a history textbook chapter on the Spanish Flu or Bubonic Plague, not a thing that I should be reading on NPR's website in the present day.
The grief -- worldwide -- is more than I can fathom.
I don't know what to say in the face of it, or what to ask. But perhaps the best prayer response in this situation isn't making a request at all, but simply the act of listening -- taking a moment each day to check in with God's presence, God's love, God's voice -- then doing what I can, from my limited position, to help stop community spread as best I can.
At least, that's what I'm going to go with, for now.
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