Thanks for your writing which helps the faithful navigate the complexities of our own world. We are among the fortunate. I am a federal employee able to telework and avoid commuting into Washington DC. We have three children off from school with varying degrees of online class work. Our oldest is severely disabled and goes to a special school for kids up to 21 many of who have vulnerable medical conditions. We can only imagine sending her back once there is a vaccine available. Luckily we can take her for walks in her wheelchair in our green suburban neighborhood and for short drives. We used to live in South America where friends with special needs children are asking for therapeutic exceptions so caregivers can take autistic and other special need kids out for short walks, drives, etcetera. With military and police enforcing quarantines in many countries the type of flexibility we have is a blessing.

Our second daughter is a senior and is slowly accepting the prospects of no prom, no graduation and no senior trip, losing her part-time job and not being able to be a counselor at Catholic summer camp. We are still trying to support her decision about what college to go to in the fall, most likely it will be UMD and not a more expensive private school. We do not even want to look how much her college savings plan is worth as we only had enough to fund the first year of public university at the height of the stock market.  Our fifteen year old son is hanging in there with his extreme exercise and playing Minecraft with his friends at night.

In addition to being lucky enough to have a job we are a family of Roman Catholic faith. We all pray the Rosary every day at 3pm. My wife Martha prays the rosary in Spanish on Facetime every afternoon with a lovely elderly lady in our parish nursing home since she can no longer visit.  As we approach Easter, it was very important for us to watch the Pope’s ‘Indulgencia Plenaria’ just a little more than a week ago and receive the act of contrition.  What a solemn moment of the Pope and the glistening Holy Sacrament contrasted against the gray and rainy Rome sky in the midst of the worst moment of Italy’s epidemic.  There is so much programming available on youtube and the internet in general. While it all by no means replaces in person engagement, we have been exposed to so many different approaches and personalities that we feel that in itself is a blessing.

As parents of a lovely, but severely disabled child we would never be able to maintain sanity or perspective without our faith.  She is the beautiful cross the family carries that strengthens our collective resolve and binds us.  We pray for all those with special needs children in their homes at this difficult moment.

Houston is quiet – which is not the usual Houston vibe.  As folks say here in Houston, you don’t come here for the mountains and the scenery; you come here to work.  So, when the city is not working, it seems to forget its purpose.

At church, we continue to have Zoom worship, Zoom teaching of Sunday school, and Zoom prayer gatherings.  We are Presbyterians, so a form of liturgy is part of our heritage if not central to our worship.  Even so, the rhythm and cadence of worship, even over the internet broadcast is more comforting than I would have expected.  I have changed a lot of my opinions over these last few weeks.

I pray that our leaders have made good choices in this lockdown.  I live in and worship with a predominantly white-collar community where many have jobs that can be done, at least for a time, at home.  Sure, folks don’t like it, but they are getting paid.  As usual, the people on the bottom rungs of society, who are just trying to get by, are suffering most.  Every time I watch our leaders make a pronouncement and watch our media ask their obvious questions, I just wonder if any of those guys have lost a paycheck in all of this.  I guess we know the answer to that.  It is depressing to watch the blind leading the blind.

On the other hand, Houston has a vibrant restaurant community that is a wonder to behold in this time of crisis.  These restaurateurs are facing an existential crisis, but they are going down fighting and cooking up great deals.  Last weekend we enjoyed cassoulet and a bottle of French wine delivered to our door.  These are the best of times amidst the worst of times.

Presbyterians have in their theological arsenal the doctrine of “common grace,” which is that grace which God showers on the world simply because he loves his creation.  In the middle of all of this mess, I see doctors and medical professionals of great skill applying their efforts to care for others.  The Houston medical center is a city in its own right filled with technology and talent, focused on caring for the sick.  The fact that I know so many of these professionals are there because they love the Lord Jesus and seek to serve him fills me with awe.  Common grace.

Taking a step back, I have been reflecting this week on St. Paul calling us to be a new creation.  To me, this means the rules and limitations of the past at Easter were broken.  In Jesus’ words, we are born again.  We are resurrection people, and in our churches, we learn what it is to be this new type of person.  We learn the language, the socialization, what is essential, and what is not. We learn how to love.  We learn, in other words, how to live and how, ultimately, to die.

It is that last part we have forgotten.  When this is all the life we have, and it is threatened, especially from an external threat we cannot, it seems, control, we are lost.  When this over, that will be my lasting memory, watching people who are existentially lost, from presidents to restaurant workers, trying desperately to find their way.  Maybe there is a sermon in that (or perhaps a whole series of sermons).

From rural Minnesota:

So far, pretty quiet here for most people. The weather hasn’t been pleasant; it was 62 yesterday and my wife and I sipped wine on the porch till the wind picked up, but that was an aberration. This morning there is a dusting of snow on the bare trees. So we haven’t been outside much. It’s been quiet–but here it’s pretty much always quiet. The folks across the street don’t seem to practice much social distancing, and we eye them warily, like dogs off their chain.

My wife’s been home the last two weeks–she was offered a thirty-day furlough and after looking at the stimulus package benefits, she took it. She’ll get paid more than she did working, drive less, and stay out of the hospital where she could pick up the bug. Good deal. The kids are here half the time and with their mom half the time, which isn’t such a bad deal compared to us being in the same small house 24/7 or near enough. We’re all healthy. Things are fine.

Except they’re not. I work for a health care union, and instead of all the things I normally do–one-on-one meetings, meetings with management to work out plans, basic human interaction–I’m at my desk sixty hours a week trying to prepare for an oncoming storm that no one knows when it will hit. Horror stories with PPE–workers exposed because there aren’t enough tests and not enough masks, and then sent home without pay because they don’t have enough in their sick bank to cover a fourteen-day quarantine. An outbreak at a nearby penitentiary where they have no idea how to isolate the offenders and no easy way to keep the disease from spreading life wildfire among not just the prisoners but the staff as well. Workers told that their immunocompromised status doesn’t matter, they still have to come work, but hopefully your reused surgical mask will keep your co-workers from getting you sick and we will keep you away from the confirmed COVID patients. And at the same time layoffs, because our health care system is so messed up that these small rural hospitals have to rely on elective surgeries to keep the doors open and don’t have the cash on hand to wait until the surge comes–even hoping for a surge of patients so that they can have the revenue to keep the doors open.

I’m not on the front lines, thankfully, so it’s embarrassing to whine. But there’s such a sense of impotence as these problems mount and mount and all I can do is make phone calls and encourage people to work together and listen as a nurse says wearily, “I don’t even see the point of all this. We’re all going to get sick. We are all getting coronavirus. We just need to make things as livable as possible.” I’ve rarely been so busy; I’ve never felt so powerless.

We’ve all done a good job of respecting those health care workers, but I’m still not sure we do it enough.