Pandemic Parables: Discoveries
Pandemic Parables: Discoveries
This weekend has been a time of discoveries, reminiscing, and mini miracles.
Yesterday a school friend of my brother's contacted me. I think I was about fourteen the last time I saw this chap who was year or two older than me. He came to stay with us in our home in Spain for a few weeks one Easter. It was not far from his native Portugal, where he still lives with his wife and family.
All three of us were on holiday from the boarding schools we attended in England. My brother, Damian, and Antonio went to a monastery, I went to a convent.
The Easter Antonio stayed we struck up a sweet friendship. I haven’t heard from him since, until yesterday when he Facebook friended me. He’d been doing FaceTime with Damian, asked about me, and Damian gave him my details.
The Easter Antonio stayed we struck up a sweet friendship. I haven’t heard from him since, until yesterday when he Facebook friended me. He’d been doing FaceTime with Damian, asked about me, and Damian gave him my details.
This virus is giving many of us an excess of time to reminisce and check into things we’d never have the time or inclination to do otherwise.
We chatted and exchanged news. It took me back to far off innocent days, in a house on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean. My morning alarm was the bells around the goats’ necks that followed their shepherd on a daily trek to high pasture. It was an formative time, and it was good to put myself back into that young self, remember my dreams and ambitions, and measure my life now through that filter.
I believe this virus time will be a reset time for many of us. We are learning to do without much that we thought was essential. As one wit said - “I never expected to give up so much for Lent!”
I’m seeing pictures of friends who are cleaning out closets and cupboards. I think we are doing that emotionally as well as physically. We might never again want to pick up some of that old baggage and the new normal will be lighter and freer. Many of us are learning new skills. I am being forced to embrace a level of technology way beyond my comfort zone. And I’m glad to be pushed past my fears.
Then today I discovered, rediscovered, that being artistically untidy can be a good thing. Years ago, when I lived in a ground floor flat in London, I left a window open and burglars grasped the opportunity and ransacked the place. However I worked for a church and didn’t have much to take. Except I had a lot of beautiful jewelry that had been my mothers and grandmother’s. I kept it right at the back of my underwear drawer. The burglars, that I suspect were kids, opened all the drawers and pulled out some of the contents. However they never found my gold and gem stash. Why not? Because the drawer was in such disarray to begin with they never spotted them.
Good things came from that invasion. The insurance money supplemented my tiny salary and enabled me to continue working at the church for another year. And I have refused to be ashamed of my creatively messy bent ever since.
All that to say that my car has not been thoroughly cleaned since my last long storytelling road trip. I keep all sorts of stuff in there as you never know what you will need as you pass through different terrains and stay with a variety of people along the way. Well guess what I found when digging for something else under the back seat? Let me give you a clue. Right now it can seem more precious than gold or gems.
It was the impossible to find, completely sold out in my local store, extra large container of antiseptic wipes. Glory!
I needed the wipes badly. They were nowhere to be found. And they were supplied just when I needed them. Thank you Lord!
To me this pandemic feels like we are close to Biblical times. I’m reminded of Elisha and the widow. She, hesitantly, used the last of her oil to cook him bread and in return received an abundance of oil. The oil in the temple burned for eight days keeping the light going, when it should only have lasted a fraction of that time - the miracle celebrated every Hannukah. The child’s five fish and two loaves were multiplied and fed a huge crowd. (I’ve always wondered if they were sardines unless that kid had a huge appetite.) All that to say that I’m believing our needs will be met one way or the other during this store-stripped time.
During this dark season relationships are being restored. People are helping every way they can. Young people are shopping for the old and infirm. Quilting groups are making face masks. Communities are coming together while keeping a safe distance. We are in a time of sorrow in which, I believe we will see miracles both domestic and dramatic.
In the meantime I’ve heard that a nearby nursing home has 66 residents who have all been found to have the virus. Eleven have been hospitalized. Some of those have come to us. So the hospital I’m working at as a Resident Chaplain now has virus patients on its isolation wings. I’ll find out more in the morning when I return to work.
So once again the house smells of cinnamon. Two loaves of pumpkin bread are cooling in the kitchen. If the only thing I can do is bake a sweet treat and pray over it, I’ll do it gladly. And I’ll believe that somehow God will take it and turn it, and the masks, and the everyday kindnesses, into something that will nurture, sustain, and bring peace.
And I’m believing for all of us that great good will come out of this season of darkness. That we will remember who we were meant to be, and embrace that truth, and Truth itself, with all our weary, frightened hearts.
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