Sunday April 11, 2021
Many years ago, when our son was still alive but not yet a teenager, our family watched a made-for-TV movie called “The Boy in a Plastic Bubble,” starring a young John Travolta
It had little to commend it. Even the story line was a bit hokey – a boy born with no immunity to anything. To protect him from catching colds, or flu, and anything serious like measles or TB, he had to be confined to a protected environment. He wore a kind of space suit to school. To have any kind of normal life, he lived inside a large plastic bubble that isolated him from everyone.
The movie was based on the true story of David Vetter, who had severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), a hereditary disease. But it was fictional, because Vetter didn’t have a happy ending. He died at the age of 13.
It seemed to me, at the time, that it also reflected the life that our son had to lead. Because he had CF, cystic fibrosis, he had to be protected from anything that might lead to a potentially fatal lung infection.
When the movie ended, our son yawned, stretched, and said, “Okay. I’m going to bed.”
On a sudden impulse, I asked, “Do you ever feel like that boy in the bubble?”
He was frozen for an instant. Then he burst into tears. All of the feelings that he had stoically suppressed came flooding forth.
We talked for an hour, maybe more.
Virtual bubbles
And here we are today, all of us, 50 years later, also living in our own bubbles. Not made of plastic, of course. But just as isolating.
All of us, that is, except for a few who not only have no bubbles of their own, they trespass into other people’s bubbles. They invade my space. They breathe my air.
It gives a new meaning to the traditional prayer: “Forgive our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass into our bubbles.”
I wonder how many of us are finding our bubbles turning into mini-prisons.
The plastic bubble certainly was a prison for the boy in the movie. In many ways, our efforts to protect our son’s fragile health also imprisoned him – although we did find ways of enabling him to lead as normal a life as possible.
But if his emotions were suppressed until they burst the floodgates, what about us?
I’m getting hard of hearing. Masks make it harder for me to carry on any conversation.
Social distancing atrophies the largest sense organ of my body – my skin. In the year since my wife died, only two people have touched me. Two. That’s all. I am as effectively sealed into a virtual bubble as the boy in the movie.
And even so, I’m far less isolated than seniors confined to one room in an institution. Where family or friends can visit once a week. If they have any family or friends left.
Zoom-fatigue
I’m told that a new word has crept into our vocabulary – Zoom fatigue. If you haven’t been on extended Zoom calls, that won’t mean a thing to you. But if you have -- like a friend who works for a national charity and spends up to eight hours a day on Zoom consultations with colleagues across the country -- you’ll know about Zoom fatigue.
Zoom is hard work. In traditional gatherings, you pay attention to one person at a time. You pay attention to all of that one person – his posture, her hands, his feet, her pages. Everyone else registers only peripherally.
There is no peripheral vision on Zoom. Every face is in your face. And there’s nothing but faces.
Zoom is no more personal than the “talking heads” on TV.
In person, you use at least four physical senses, and maybe some intuitive senses as well. You can feel the person’s presence, as well as see and hear them. On Zoom, three of your senses are useless.
I suggest that today’s level of isolation exceeds that of the boy in the plastic bubble.
I wonder what the legacy of pandemic precautions will be, if and when they end. Will the pain go away? Will loneliness be forgotten, shrugged off?
Or will those feelings that we have bravely repressed come bubbling back to damage our relationships in the new normal, whatever that turns out to be?
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Copyright © 2021 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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YOUR TURN
Lots and lots of mail about last week’s column on the labels we attach to people. I had to edit some letters quite heavily – apologies to those writers.
Jim Henderschedt wrote, “You got me on ‘whenever we stick labels on people, we make them vulnerable for attack.’ That says it all even if we do it without malice. We (I) have a hell of a lot we (I) must unlearn.”
Ruth Buzzard recalled “a song in the musical South Pacific that prejudice has to be learned. Babies are not born with prejudice, they learn it from their parents and friends, and they do not realize that they are prejudiced.
People have to consciously learn NOT to be prejudiced.
“I love to list some of Canada’s multiracial and small-l liberal appointments: The former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was a woman. A former Governor General was a black woman born in Haiti. Our present Minister of Defence wears a turban. And 30 years ago Whistler elected an openly gay mayor. We can be proud of our progress but we still have a long way to go.
“I am disgusted by the rhetoric of prejudice today. It is based on a primitive fear of the ‘other’. I wish I knew a solution, but I think we all have to keep trying to be open to new and different ideas.”
Cliff Boldt: “As I read your article about fear, I became more and more aware of my white, male, and Christian privilege in today’s society. I grew up into it and now have to deal with as best I can.”
John Shaffer: “I have never faced serious discrimination because of who I am. Perhaps the most painful ‘judging’ has come in expectations of me in my position as a clergyperson, with people assuming things about me that were not true. And, come to think of it, Easter provides the setting for the greatest discomfort because I have not been particularly honest about my own personal belief system on this day.”
James Russell picked up a thread that several others also commented on: “I’m a bit baffled that none of your friends – and notably the women – admitted facing discrimination. Am I reading this wrong? I have yet to meet a woman who wasn’t told often and early to be careful about what she wore, where she walked, how late she stayed, how alone she travelled, how pushy she seemed, …. Guys, not so much.
“Perhaps, like many of us, your friends are so surrounded and immersed in the ‘normality’ of prejudice that the guys don’t notice and the women think you’re asking only if they’ve experienced ‘more than normal prejudice’. And none of them wants to tell a mixed group about personal experiences of sexual assault, or seem to be making excuses about jobs they didn’t get, trips they weren’t invited on, un-funny jokes they had to laugh at….”
Judyth Mermelstein: “It seems your friends were extraordinarily lucky not to know what it feels like to be attacked or harassed for who they are. Estimates of sexual assaults I've seen say it happens to one female in four and about one male in five, though most never report what happened to them and may not tell anyone until long after the event. The #MeToo movement led many women to tell their stories on social media but it's rarer for men to admit they were victims, probably because they fear it makes them ‘unmanly’ to admit having suffered.
“Personally, I've been fairly lucky: beaten up a few times for being Jewish but no permanent damage, two unsuccessful attempts at rape, too many ‘jokes’ and blocked career paths for being female… Oh, and a shock when an old friend came to my workplace on business, grabbed my breasts in front of my employers and said ‘I always wanted to do that,’ and everyone took it as a joke.
“That such prejudice is still quite common in Canada -- and expressed without hesitation or shame on social media -- reveals a serious flaw in our education systems. It seems these people don't know science shows all humans belong to one race, or that the Charter of Rights applies to all equally, or that violence and abuse of others is unacceptable.”
Laurna Tallman: “As a girl and as a woman, then, as a Christian, I have always known a measure of the fear you write about. And I am a white woman of a relatively privileged class from a caring, strongly religious family and extended family who grew up and came to adulthood in one of the safest cities and countries on the planet.
“Even before I received explicit teaching about inappropriate behaviour from males, I had a sense that some males would teasingly invade my privacy to create a sense of vulnerability. That sort of experience would gradually escalate as I learned more about the predations not only of males, but of the antagonism likely to arise from some people once they knew I was a professing Christian. It was not only my sex that might be targeted but my entire person for what I believed. From my earliest adulthood, I experienced those assaults across racial, gender, ethnic, and religious lines.
“Sometimes I found myself inadvertently in situations where I feared for my life. When I moved away from home while still in university with a job that involved late nights, I lived in a section of Toronto where I always feared for my safety coming home. I learned that other white, privileged women could be as sadistic as any other category of human being. I learned that being Black, gay, Jewish, Muslim, or Sikh did not protect one from becoming the predator instead of the preyed upon. Remember that scripture warns the follower of Jesus that the worst kinds of betrayal can come from within one’s own family. Until we have better ways of dealing with mental illness, some of those fears are well-founded, too.
“Today [written on Easter Sunday] we celebrate the triumph of a man who was able to combat those sources of evil in society until they united against him and who showed us that even when the worst has been done a triumph yet remains. May you know the presence of the risen Jesus today.”
Steve Roney: “I commend you for your position that we should not see each other in racial terms; that we ought not to notice that David Suzuki is Asian, or Albert Einstein Jewish (or Elon Musk white, or Kanye West black). This is what MLK preached, and Jesus before him: not to judge by the colour of our skin but by our character.
“However, you break your own rule: you give the fact that the 65-year-old woman who was attacked in New York was Asian its own paragraph. The first thing you say about the police officer who restrained George Floyd is that he was white. When you note that Floyd was black, you list a series of other black people, thrusting him into that group identity.
“Not helpful.”
Heather Sandilands took the opposite position: “I understand and agree with your column Prejudices; succinct and well-said -- until the last paragraph. I have experienced both discrimination and being part of a privileged minority. Therefore it does matter that David Suzuki is Japanese, that Viktor Frankl is a Jew, to notice Kamela Harris' appearance.. Those pieces of their identity matter as much as my own as a woman, queer-identified, an anglo-quebecoise, well-schooled, and a professional and liberal Christian. These are some of the layers of experience which significantly shape my being and my experiences of life. If Viktor Frankl hadn't been a Jew, who had lived through multiple horrors because of that, he would not have become the psychologist or philosopher that he was. It matters that Floyd was Black and Chauvin is white, and what colours of skin the jury members live in.
“It's not the layers -- or labels -- that are bad. It is recognizing how we use them to understand and interpret our world. My being female lets me understand that wolf-whistles are degrading. Your comment about imagination is spot-on; it is because of my privileges and using my imagination that I can see the hegemony of English, or realize that because I have absorbed an insidious 'white is right' outlook I have to work hard to appreciate the anger of the #BILM movement, or understand what it means to be Treaty People. Only when I see those people with their layer-labels can I confront the harm that my own has done to me -- and also to those others.
“It was only when I was confronted by a friend who told me I had to see her black skin that I came to understand that I/we [need to] see the whole person in front of me/us.”
Karen Toole: “I have no trouble relating to prejudice. I was as they put ‘a stupid fat kid’ from ‘the North end garbage dump.’ I was an overweight team who grew up on the other side of the tracks. I was woman in ministry...enough said! ‘Why do you wear that colour, it doesn't suit you?’ ‘Why aren't you at home raising your children?’ ‘You should do something with your hair.’ I haven't yet met a male colleague who got those comments.
“I worked with the black community in Halifax and I was very, very white.
“I visited Norway House reserve, and I was a new white person with no real reason to be there.
“I also had the privilege of hearing a very well-educated black woman at a conference tell us all, ‘You can't have my pain of prejudice; find your own. Until then we can't talk’.”
As he often does, Bob Rollwagen summed up the issue: “In a way, we are all living with fear. Bullies resist it by striking out at others. Some use power to hide their fear. Because I associate with a lot of affirming liberal individuals, I seldom experience gender issues, but am constantly shocked by comments from people in leadership roles who do not know I am gay. I am convinced that their acceptance of my reaction is strictly because I am white, European heritage.
“I must admit that history illustrates that racism is declining, but ever so slowly. Because it exists in every facet of society in every country of the world and is a tool of power and war, we need to push harder to make anti-racism a central pillar of our educational curriculum.
“Like weeds, when you remove one from your lawn every time you see one, you end up with a healthy green lawn.”
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)
ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE
The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns