ISBC 40 - Navigating the Three Ds
Chapter 40 of Hope: A User's Manual
If you look closely enough, the signs are still there. 4½ years ago, Covid-19 came into our lives and disrupted, displaced, and destroyed lives, expectations, and so much more. It doesn’t feel like that long ago but it has been 4½ years. I was thinking about the experience of Covid with this chapter and so I started to walk around the church I serve looking for signs of that season of our congregational life.
The somewhat humorous signs telling people which pews people could sit in and which they could not are gone.
The signs on the door telling people that masks are required are gone.
Automated hand sanitizer dispensers that we rented are gone.
Recording equipment left set up in the sanctuary from week to week since the sanctuary wasn’t being used is gone.
The emails from our executive presbyter with the subject line “Love Note #...” where she detailed info about the pandemic haven’t been sent out for a long time.
But in my walk around the church, there were these signs.
One table in our entry area for the sanctuary are two boxes of face masks, a bottle of hand sanitizer, and a package of disinfecting wipes. There’s actually the thinnest layer of dust on top of the one box of masks. Those were about the only signs that I could still find around the building that said, “we were in a global pandemic that started 4½ years ago.”
MaryAnn asked these questions at the end of this chapter...
Where do you see disruption in the world around you? How about displacement? Destruction?1
But even though some signs are harder to find, others are very much still with us. Lives were destroyed as people died or are still dealing with the symptoms of Long Covid. Disruptions are still felt in the divisions that were pried into and pushed further open. I still feel a sense of displacement of trying to find a new way in this changed world as a pastor in a congregation.
My heart breaks for those who lost loved ones during the pandemic whether it was directly due to Covid-19 or those who were not able to enter into their losses in the ways they needed to be able to do so. I grieve for the ways that we divided ourselves and the ways we still feel those divisions. I ache for those who lost out on vital moments of life (graduations, weddings, baptisms, and so forth). And for all that we are only just now beginning to see in the effects...it’s a lot of disruption, displacement, and destruction.
However, what I hold to in this is the same as where MaryAnn finished this chapter - in resurrection and renewal. The pattern that is built into this world in which we live is that of brith, life, death, and resurrection/renewal. It is all around us. That is my hope in this time of the three Ds... not to forget or negate what has taken place, but to hold those alongside the hope that something new will emerge.
Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed
McKibben Dana, MaryAnn. Hope: A User's Manual (p. 170). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.
I am all caught up now. I found the three Ds a very useful framework for thinking about life and the narratives of scripture.
COVID is still out there, still "upsetting the apple cart" and the latest round of shots for elders like me are about to be released this week. In our area, especially at the hospitals, masks are available and even in the shelter I am currently staying in hands sanitizer is prevelent. We are never going to NOT have SARS around and unfortunately is the truth.