Pandemic Diaries 21
Another day done. Here are my kids Nora and Matthew, out on the back patio with Roscoe, doing their Latin homework late this morning:
Around the same time, I received via delivery a case of Birra Nursia, the beer of the monks of Norcia, sent from their California importer. You, my fellow Americans, still have time to order some in time for Easter delivery. I cleaned the bottles with a sanitizing wipe:
Later, after I was reminded by a friend that in the Russian Orthodox tradition, beer in not forbidden in Lent, I greeted cocktail hour with two cold Birra Nursias — one blond, the other dark — which I enjoyed with Matt:
And Roscoe, who is a fat, lazy old dog, just like his master. Look at that belly! No kidding, we only give him a minimal amount of kibble daily, but he is so lazy that he remains a tub. I adore this velvet log:
What a world. The most exciting thing that happened all day is drinking Benedictine ale on the back patio and cradling a fat elderly mutt.
What happened with y’all? Let’s see.
From England:
I wanted to thank you for telling me to keep a diary. I’ve started doing it, when time allows, in the evening before bed. If anything, it helps to place a decisive end on days which are all blurring into one. But it’s also helpful for gathering my thoughts and reflecting on what God’s been saying and doing in the day.I wanted to share as well that I’ve turned my reading of Augustine’s The City of God into a project, and I’m blogging my way through it here. My aim is to make it accessible to the low-church laypeople who I’ve grown up with and worship alongside, hopefully introducing them to the wisdom of the church’s old dead guys–it’s a wisdom we sorely need.So much of what Augustine says is just leaping right off the page for our current crisis. I can’t remember if I read it on your blog or elsewhere, but I’m sure you’ve seen that Pornhub have been offering free premium access in various European lockdown countries–apparently as a “service”. It’s sickening stuff, and will surely hook waves of new people onto a destructive new habit (what a dark irony from this strange Lent!) John Gray, in a fantastic piece for the New Statesman last week, suggests this will be one of many reasons why the crisis is a turning point.With that on my mind, I came to a section in Book I of City of God. Augustine is railing against gladiatorial games and how they corrupted the Roman moral character. He refers to a time when the Roman gods supposedly ordered games to be put on in their honour, to allay a serious plague. This gave the games a foothold in Roman life, and they began their corrupting influence on the great society. Augustine writes:“the powers of evil foresaw, in their cleverness, that the plague would soon come to its natural end, and they craftily used this opportunity to bring upon you a far more serious pestilence, which gives them greater satisfaction. For this disease attacks not the body but the character” (Book I.32)It’s the same powers of evil at work now. There’s already been tragic loss of life from COVID-19 and more to come. But it will run its natural course. People are optimistically speculating on the moral renewal this might bring about in some places–and I hope so too. But Augustine should show us that things may set in which lead to even greater corruption.Thanks God Pascha is upon us.
From Las Vegas:
On Friday, I talked with a few acquaintances who are in complete fear. Both are middle-aged men who have largely lost any faith in God that they had. They are very worried about our local economy and that we will not recover and that the state, largely dependent on tourism dollars, may go bankrupt. These are men, like me, who have had numerous setbacks from the various economic downturns, each of which has hit the Las Vegas area extremely hard. They are sore afraid.On the same morning, I was struck at how peaceful the world is. Sin City is mostly sinless, these days. The streets are empty and quiet. People are friendly (but giving each other space). More people seem to be spending good quality time with their families, taking walks. Life is beautiful and amazing.I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and this last weekend was one of two general conferences for the year. During these two weekends each year, we have 10 hours of sermons and music over two days, broadcast from Salt Lake City. This year was a little different, as there was no crowd and recorded music and social distancing, but it was beautiful in any event. It was full of wonderful messages and was spiritually uplifting.I miss attending our weekly services and seeing my neighbors and friends. Our prophet directed us to stop holding Sunday services a month ago. However, we have been authorized to have communion at home. In our church, all worthy men can hold the priesthood and officiate in the blessing and giving of the bread and water. It has been a blessing to be able to it at home. I have also been taking doing it for a elderly sister each week, and we try to allow everyone to receive communion.I feel more peaceful myself than I have in years. I have gone through plenty of trials and difficulties of extreme nature that I have yearned for peace. With Covid-19, the world is at peace and I feel more at peace.This is God’s world. Perhaps the day rapidly approaches when he says the time has come for him to come again. If so, we may look back at these days are wonderful times compared to what we will face before the Great and Dreadful Day of the Lord. Perhaps these are the Seven Fat Years during which we need to fill our spiritual and physical granaries so that we survive the Seven Lean Years. Perhaps the Hour is very nigh when we need our Lamps full prior to the arrival of the Bridegroom.I will trust in the Lord either way.
As I sit by myself and look at all the funny memes and Tik-Tok videos of people at home, I think of the reactions of people who are forced to spend time with their family and never go out. There are legitimate needs out there, but there is also a great deal of iniquity.
We are impatient. We are restless. We do not want to rest. We do not want to sit with the Lord and contemplate what he has given us. We want to “get back to work.” We are restless, and our souls will remain restless until they find rest in God.
How does this apply to COVID19? Well, it must. Something this big happening all over the world cannot have happened without God’s divine influence. He does not ignore a sparrow that falls to the Earth. How could he ignore this? I’m quite sure that God has seen us all. He has seen what we have struggled with. He has seen our bickering, our exhaustion, and out bitterness. And our God who loves us – who let our bent-ness be our overseer for a small amount of time – has now said:
STOP. Lie down, and REST.
DO NOT SERVE OTHER “GODS” OR ANYTHING ELSE BUT ME. Do not serve all the things that you now see cannot save you. Look at all your plans just weeks before. Where are they now? Instead, see that it is I who provides. It is I who gives you life. It is I who inflicts death. And about that death you see: Do not worry, because only I call people home. They will come if I wish. They will stay if I command.
WORSHIP. Look what I have done to show my power. There is no toilet paper in the store and no work at your job because of my discipline and instruction. See: You still have toilet paper, don’t you? A check is in the mail, too, isn’t it? Isn’t my instruction gentle? Am I not good? Can’t you see that even now, there is food and medicine and delivery and light and heat and electricity and internet because of my great and wonderful compassion.
SERVE. There is still work to do. There are some who work harder now than before. Take strength, because I am mighty to save. I am mighty to save. I will work my power through doctors, nurses, garbage men, janitors, and unemployed souls desperately seeking work. I will work wonders in your midst, and people will be speechless because of what they will see. Honor the authorities I have placed over you. They have been placed in their positions for your good. And though they are often blind to me, take comfort, because they have no true power. They are my servants, whether they know it or not. I have already made them too busy to do or think about anything except for what I wish. Their goals for private gain are gone. They instead only argue about how to save life. They bicker because they do not know how to save life. Imagine what they can accomplish by me and for your good when I decide to show them?
PRAY. I will watch over you. Call to me. I have brought your plans to ruin to save you. I have let your restlessness be your overseer for long enough. I am bringing you and your family back to me. Notice how all of your friends, your distractions, your business are now gone. Come to me, because I love you. I have pursued you from the garden of Eden, over centuries and millennia until now. You are free by the work of Christ, but you are not truly free yet. I will let you escape from your burdens. You will not be free, because look where that put you. Instead, learn from my. My burden is light and my yoke is easy. Come to me. You will rest. I can save. Pray. I have done wonders in the past. Call on me again.
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of sin and death. I qanna of you, and I will never rest in my pursuit of you.
Stay safe, everybody. Stay strong. Be filled by the Spirit, which will push you do to what you ought to do.
Greetings from rural Oregon. I live in one of the three least populated counties in Oregon. Eastern Oregon folks have kind of prided themselves that we have no COVID19 cases like the metro areas do, what with all the cities crowded with people. No more. A local case was announced on social media yesterday, and the Facebook postings following that were amazing. Several rude, foul-mouthed local people were posting on various sites “who is it” “where does this person work” “we have the right to know who it is”, while many others replied with comments citing HIPPA, patient privacy, it doesn’t matter just keep up your social distancing, etc. Admins had to turn off comments. I noticed that some of the public posts this morning did not allow for comments. The school board posted that they were notified a staff member had been diagnosed, the Health Department memo stated the first case was a male. The witch hunt is on, people are playing detective trying to figure out who it is. Sigh.
After reading some of the other diaries, I wanted to communicate how LITTLE impact all this is having on our family at the moment. This is not to discount the struggles that people (and especially healthcare workers) are experiencing in other places, but just to give a view of what it looks like “on the ground”, right now, in a typical midwest county. And maybe explain why it doesn’t yet feel like the end of the world, not just to us, but to many Americans.My company makes medical equipment, so business is booming right now. I can easily work from home, and in fact was doing so 2 days a week even before the lock-downs, so going full-time from home was an easy transition. I prefer it anyway, to the noisy “open office” we have at work.My wife is a stay-at home mother… our younger son was transitioning to home-school anyway just before the Governor closed the schools here in Ohio. Our older son seems to do fine with on-line instruction. He’s mostly happy school starts an hour later now. Our boys are shy, and not into a lot of extra-curricular activities, so having them home most of the time is pretty normal.Our semi-rural county has an abundance of parks and natural areas, so it’s easy for us to get outside the house once day, and enjoy the beginning Spring weather after a long winter, while obeying the 6-feet social distancing rules. The dogs feels like she’s died and gone to Dog Heaven – daily walks after lunch!!We’re in the middle of transitioning churches, and still feel rather “new” at the current place, so missing faces in worship each week is not so hard (in fact, it’s kind of a nice break for an introvert).We will miss Easter Week services, and even more the gathering with our extended family, but that’s about the worst of it. If this is what a “Pearl Harbor Moment” feels like, to be honest, it’s kind of a let-down. I doubt I will be telling my grandchildren stories about it.One more detail – I’ve been tracking the new coronavirus cases in Ohio as the numbers come in each day, and comparing them to the Forecasts from our state health department. As of yesterday, we’re averaging about 1/3 of the new cases per day, (300 yesterday) compared to predictions. Note that these are the Official Predictions which ASSUME the current social distancing rules. Total deaths in Ohio related to corona are 120. If things keep going this way, it’s looking like the outbreak will peek well before the predicted numbers of 10,000 new cases in late April. I’m betting the numbers start to go down significantly before the end of this week.Again – I know things are horrible in certain parts of the country, and my heart goes out to the people living there (and even more in Spain and Italy at the moment). But this isn’t looking like a National Emergency from here – just particularly bad in certain localized regions of the country.The Economic Emergency, on the other hand, with trillions in new debt and the loss of millions of jobs, could well be another story….
The COVID virus has come to our part of the world, but it seems our political leaders (whom i did not vote for) are doing a credible job. no complaints. admiration. our chief health officer has given sound advice, the provincial authorities have responded in a timely fashion. Deeply grateful for public servants who do their work well.
my home congregation is hosting a blood donor clinic in our gym on Tuesday.
below is a an email forwarded from Kevin King, friend and ceo of Mennonite Disaster Service. Thought your readers might enjoy this bit of good news. Plain Christians pitching in and making a difference. Might inspire others.
May God’s grace go before you so you know the Way. And may we all meet upon that path. Christ have mercy.
Hi [name]:
Good to hear from you.
The ingenuity of the plain people here in Lancaster PA and eastern Ohio never ceases to amaze me.
Equipment is being moved out of Amish cabinet shops and making room for their wives cutting and sewing machine. (cabinet shops ordered closed)
Harness shops too. MDS is helping them acquire cloth for face masks and a pattern approved by local hospital authorities with 20,000 employees. They are cranking them out by the thousands per day.
Lancaster Prison – 2000. EMT authorities – no problem – order filled.
Problem: can MDS design a mask for the interpreter for hearing impaired so deaf can read their lips through a mask. Yes, vinyl clear screen surrounded by a breathing apparatus so the lips can be seen.
Last November, a local apple warehouse was purchased nearby by the conservative group and turned it into a warehouse to distribute food for local ministries. Little did they know how timely this would be. Truckloads of food and milk are being dumped because distribution patterns and labor are upset. So this Blessings of Hope group is now providing boxes of hope for a family of four for $7. Local ministries come in and get pallets of these boxes and distribute to their vulnerable populations. Last week Walmart almost dumped 4 tractor trailers of fresh butchered whole chickens (chilled). They are now being put to use.
God at work.
Kevin King
Mennonite Disaster Services
Thanks y’all. Please keep the stories coming to me at rod — at — amconmag — dot — com. Be sure to put PANDEMIC DIARIES in the subject line, and don’t forget to say from where you write.
And please, if you have a dog’s belly near to hand, please scratch it. You will increase the amount of happiness in a world that sorely needs it.
