Sunday April 18, 2021
Let’s imagine the unthinkable. Suppose life never goes back to “normal.”
Increasingly, I hear people expressing frustration about pandemic restrictions. They want to visit their grandchildren; travel to exotic places; hug their friends.
I share those desires.
As I’ve written before, COVID-19 hit me particularly hard. Most people have at least one other human around the dwelling – sometimes several generations. I don’t. Since my wife’s death, I’m alone. Really alone.
And I’m certainly not the only one.
I long for a time when I can associate with my friends directly – not virtually.
But maybe things won’t go back to what they used to be.
The ability to mutate
The human COVID-19 coronavirus has existed for a little more than a year. In that time it has spread everywhere around the world. It has evolved at least three new variants, each more infectious and more lethal than the original.
What if vaccinations are not enough to conquer COVID-19, to exile it to Never-Never-Land? What if we’re stuck with pandemic precautions for generations to come?
A year ago, I suggested that defeating the coronavirus is relatively simple. Viruses are parasites. They cannot reproduce without a host. Deny them a new host, and they’re gone.
It would follow, therefore, that if we could isolate everyone – and I do mean everyone, from heads of state to Ethiopian goat herders – for two weeks, goodbye COVID.
It won’t happen, of course.
The Ebola virus didn’t flower into a global pandemic because residents of equatorial Africa don’t do much jet-setting. But COVID-19 was spread by, and through, the affluent world. Where no one has the authority or capability of isolating everyone. Important people have to attend top-level meetings. Wealthy people buy their way around rules that limit lesser humans. Sports fans insist on gathering in thousands to cheer for their favourites.
And rebels refuse to conform, on principle.
All of which give the virus an endless pool of potential spreaders.
Which puts us back to dealing with a virus that can mutate more rapidly than we can develop vaccines against it.
Samples of the new world
What might life be like under those circumstances? I suggest we’re already finding out.
Offices, for example, are discovering that many of their staff can work just as well from home as from a cubicle in a downtown office tower.
Why do we gather them in germ factories? Tradition, probably -- because we’ve always done it that way. And perhaps control -- because we didn’t trust people to keep working without someone keeping an eye on them.
The pandemic has already pushed doctors to handle routine appointments over the phone, although the technology has been around for over a century.
Similarly, it has forced schools and universities to explore new patterns of education.
We line students up in rows in classrooms and lecture halls, and spray them with information in the hope that some of it will stick. Because that’s how we have done it for over 3,000 years.
Even though we didn’t know much, back then, about how the human brain develops. What notions it can grasp, at what age.
We didn’t realize that some students learn best on their own; others learn best in working groups. Some reason their way to knowledge; others learn by doing.
Intentional relationships
Churches too have gathered people in rows because that’s the way they have always done it.
Some churches have shut down, waiting for the pandemic to go away. Others have discovered new ways of meeting. My own congregation has increased its Sunday attendance, using Zoom. Some of what we’ve learned will continue when (or if) restrictions are lifted.
Other changes may be less benign.
Restaurants will survive. But not unchanged. We will want more than drive-through dining. But maintaining safe distances between table bubbles will require less crowding. Fewer paying customers. Prices will go up.
The biggest changes may come in personal relationships. We cannot assume that friendships will sustain themselves while we huddle within security blankets.
Friendships will have to depend on mutual trust. I will need to trust that my friends have been just as careful about their bubbles as I have been. And I will need to care enough about them to take the risk of getting close to them, and they to me.
Maintaining friendships will mean, literally, putting our lives in each other’s hands.
By implication, then, mass rallies and marches – whether for sports, entertainment, or politics – will become less and less acceptable. If you’re hesitant to take a risk with your friends, why would you trust a total stranger next to you?
It’s a new world. It’s already here. It may be here for a long time to come.
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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
Barbara Schmidt “had to write to say how ‘bang on’ you were, with this column on The Trauma of Living in a Bubble. You were able to say in words how I was feeling, but I did not have the words to express it. While I may not feel like I am in a mini-prison, some days I do, when I ache to see Grandchildren and great-grand-children who live far away and we cannot visit.”
Bill Shantz, on the other hand, wrote, “Coming from a medical background, I cringe when I encounter the word ‘trauma’ to mean ‘psychological/mental/emotional/social trauma’, or even ‘spiritual trauma’ without elaborating the matter.
“‘Trauma’ (unmodified) began as a word to identify physical insult/injury (thus, American Trauma Hospitals specializing in treating motor vehicle accidents, gun-shots, etc.); but is now a word that is used simply to get people’s attention.
“How about re-writing your item identifying different kinds of non-physical trauma?
“Homo Sapiens is a species not designed to live in isolation.”
Tom Watson called the column “moving. You painted a vivid word-picture of that gut-wrenching conversation with your son. You also paint a vivid word-picture of the emptiness that is the world of isolation into which we have been plunged this past year.”
Isabel Gibson: “I don't know if I'll live long enough to see a dispassionate and comprehensive assessment of our pandemic response. Surely we got some things right, but just as surely I expect we got some things not so right. The collateral damage from extended isolation, especially for singletons and frail seniors, is just one of the unintended and difficult-to-measure consequences.”
Isabel has written her own commentary on the handling of the Covid issue on her blog. I commend it to you: https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2021/04/18/reason-to-believe/
Bob Rollwagen mused on the bubble he lives in: “My reality is very comfortable and remote. I am fortunate. We Zoom with other bubbles, one on one. Group Zooms are frequently disappointing and avoided. Our church is very tech oriented at this time. No discussion of opening, as that to would likely be not very satisfying and create problems for those that have disadvantages.
“Every time the rules are relaxed, the privileged run out hoping it is normal -- and we all lock up again. I am not surprised at this entitled approach. Reality is reality. It is not what it was when I was born and, at the current rate of societal change, I have little concept about what it will look like before I move on.
“I know one thing, each morning, I am glad to be alive and living in Canada and deal with what happens in my surrounding space for that day, something I have done for decades.”
By some coincidence, Bob’s last sentence matches today’s thought from the Frederick Buechner Centre: “This is the first day because it has never been before and the last day because it will never be again. Be alive if you can all through this day today of your life.”
Alana Van Steelandt didn’t like the closing metaphor of Bob’s letter last week, in which he related countering prejudices one at a time, as they occur, with pulling weeds from a lawn. Alana asked, “Who decided that a ‘healthy’ lawn is a single colour of green and a single species of grass?
“The microbiology of healthy soil wants to be growing – something, anything. Weeds are the first species to begin to grow when the earth needs to heal itself. A healthy, biological soil is neither one shade of green nor one species of grass, but rather a diverse, multiculture of grasses, legumes and blossoms in multiple shades of the light spectrum.”
This writer asked to remain anonymous: “Reading of your problem understanding people speaking through a mask, when you have hearing aids, I went into the Credit Union in Vernon and asked for a fairly large amount of cash. The young lady serving me said "Pull down your pants".
“I was so taken back that I stepped back 2 paces. I then started to look behind her for a hidden camera thinking I was on Candid Camera. Seeing no camera, I stepped back up to the wicket and said "Pull down my pants?"
“The young lady swung her monitor around and, pointing to a picture of me on her screen and at the same time pulling down her own mask to demonstrate, said ‘Pull down your mask. Because of the amount of cash is over $500, I have to check your face with your photo on my screen.’
“Fortunately, she saw the funny side of the situation.”
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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