No news from me today. Coffee and rye toast for a late breakfast, black beans and cauliflower rice for lunch, a long mono sleep this afternoon, and the rest of the black beans and cauliflower rice for dinner. Such, such are the joys.

From London:

I am writing from London, where away from the front lines in the hospitals, yesterday’s unimaginable has already become surprisingly routine. Our lockdown started three weeks ago and has no firm date for when it will be over. However, it is a very British lockdown – we queue outside supermarkets, respectfully follow the spirit if not always the letter of the law, and carry on. Taking my one hour of permitted exercise today by walking along the Thames, I was struck by how lockdown London looked so much the same, and yet so changed, like a favourite afternoon view seen at twilight for the first time. Families and dog walkers are everywhere, but there are no groups larger than a household, and many people wear masks. Stopping at a supermarket on the way home, I had to queue outside for five minutes (one out, one in policies are in place), but the shelves were full. If I could not get to the shops, deliveries are working as normal. Our milk man continues to deliver three times a week.

I am adjusting to the new life of working from home (I work as a management consultant). I had never realised how much of my work day, or at least the moments that make it enjoyable, is made up of spontaneous chats with colleagues. Now we video call most days. It is something at least, and one wonders how we would have coped with this situation even ten years ago. We are being asked to take 8 weeks of unpaid leave over the next 6 months as our firm tries to avoid redundancies. Not ideal, but hardly the end of the world for a well-paid young employee.

Working from home has freed up some time, but it’s the weekends which now seem to stretch on. New hobbies, such as yoga, have taken up some of the time. There are virtual activities too: poker last week, pub quizzes here and there, basic video chats. Walking back from tennis yesterday, my partner and I saw a block of flats all leaning out of their windows, doing a pub quiz together. I am reading a lot more now, and am able to tackle some introductions to topics which need serious chunks of focused time, rather than being squeezed onto Tube journeys. And of course, there are the omnipresent streaming services: Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney+, BBC iPlayer, YouTube – I flick across them all. In lockdown, when you are healthy and economically stable, boredom is the enemy.

Nationally we are of course going through uncertain times economically, and there is massive strain on the health and social services. Economically, an unprecedented government emergency financial package is in action but may just be plastering cracks in the dam. Debenhams, a high street retailer founded in 1813, filed for bankruptcy this week. A large group of households, who entered the pandemic with low pay, unstable jobs, high debt, and facing high housing costs are being pushed over the precipice. In terms of health services, the NHS is stretched each winter just coping with annual influenza cases. The government has called back 20,000 retired health workers, final year medical students are being rushed to hospitals, and over 750,000 Britons volunteered in answer to a national call for help. Yet the PPE, large scale testing regimes, and intensive care infrastructure is astonishingly slow to mobilise.

I wonder when this will end and how its mark will be felt in the years to come. No one can know for sure, but I do have three suspicions.

First, 2020 could yet prove to be the high watermark for globalisation. To take my own views as an example, I would say that I was a beneficiary and fainthearted supporter of globalisation. It has drawbacks, but on balance I would have told you it was an engine of prosperity. Now, there are some basic questions about the global system we live in and the drawbacks of hyper-interconnectivity. Why can someone eating a dodgy bat bring down economies around the world? Do our supply chains need to be as extended as they are? If we include the downside risk and social costs, in addition to the economic factors, are too many of our basic supplies reliant on other countries?

Second, the size and expense of the government machine becomes harder to justify. We fund a monolithic government structure that enjoys massive power under a veneer of democratic accountability. We ask for competence in return. Given the problems with the government response to the crisis, will we continue to make that bargain? Alternatively, some aspects of the response have been so dynamic that they suggest the existing institutions were bloated and slow, serving themselves more than their taxpayers.

Third, and more positively, there is huge potential for structural change. Pre-Covid 19 we may have been living in a local maximum — a social system that did a ‘good enough’ job and is hard to change to something better without significant upheaval. The resurgence in local community spirit could be the start of a movement away from centralised government ‘cradle to grave’ reliance. Pandemics bring family and friends into focus; squeezing out the last ounce of economic growth blurs into our background concerns. As underpaid doctors, nurses, teachers, retail workers, and logistics personnel in the UK lead the response while higher paid City financial workers are classed without hesitation as non-essential, we may see some income convergence.

 

From Ohio:

Spring is finally here in Ohio.  The forsythia and the daffodils are blooming, the birds are chirping, and the weather seems to be finally making a turn toward consistently warmer.  But to most of us I think spring has had no effect on our moods, since quarantine continues.

Gov. DeWine announced the school closures on March 12, to take effect at the end of the day March 16.  The vast majority of schools closed at the end of the day Friday, March 13.  That means it’s been an entire month since my children have been in school, and an entire month since I’ve been able to work.  I am supposed to work at home, but I find that impossible to do much of with the children home and my spouse an essential worker on third shift.  My employer has been understanding so far, but for how much longer?

And then there’s church.  I can’t fully describe my feelings yesterday, celebrating Easter without attending Mass.  We watched a livestreamed Mass, but it wasn’t the same at all.  My youngest child was misbehaving terribly during it, saying that “this isn’t really Mass, we’re not at church.”  In my heart, that’s basically how I feel.  This quarantine has really brought home the importance of physicality to rituals.  Think of Good Friday, for instance.  In the Catholic Church, this day is physically different than all other days – statues veiled, altar stripped, tabernacle empty, the priest entering in silence.  And yet if you’re watching on TV or the computer, those differences aren’t as profoundly noticeable.

Our bishop didn’t prohibit confessions when he cancelled public Masses, but pretty much all parishes cancelled confessions too.  I understand that many of our priests are elderly or have health conditions that make it unwise for them to hear confessions, but I couldn’t find anywhere that was still holding confessions with appropriate health precautions.  I finally found one parish during Holy Week and was able to go to confession, the first time I had been in several years.  I doubt I’m the only one who’s been away from the sacrament of reconciliation for years who felt prompted to confess during this quarantine.  How many of those would-be penitents who feel the Holy Spirit leading them back to the Church during this crisis have found that they cannot go to confession because both Masses and confessions are cancelled?

I have taken this health crisis seriously, but I am disappointed in the Church.  If I, an ordinary layperson, can think of several ways to make confessions available to at least some laypeople while taking health precautions, why can’t our bishops at least try?  My friend had been in RCIA and was supposed to enter the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil.  With all Masses being cancelled, candidates and catechumens find their entrance to the Catholic Church delayed indefinitely.  I’m not sure my friend will end up joining the Church in the end because of how disheartened he is with the bishops and what he calls their lack of courage in this crisis.  If people can still go to a fast food drive-through, why can’t they attend a drive-in Mass without receiving communion, or go to a socially-distanced confession to be absolved of their sins?  And my heart breaks to think of the Catholics who have died from this virus without receiving last rites.

We’re now in the octave of Easter, but it feels like an unending Lent.

From central Kentucky:

Here the biggest Covid-19 controversy is over Gov. Beshear’s announcement that Kentucky State Police officers would be taking down the license plate numbers of any one who attended an in- person worship service yesterday. These people would then be notified by mail of a directive to self- quarantine themselves for 14 days. It appears from media reports that only one church, Marysville Baptist Church, actually had any plates taken down.

KSP responded to citizen complaints on some other congregations, but those were found to be in compliance. Drive- in services are still allowed and encouraged, as are on- line services of course. From my social media feeds, you’d think that Christians are only a couple of days away from being rounded up and sent to the camps. The only word for it is crazy.

I do not agree that the restrictions on method of church service attendance in Kentucky as expressed at the state level rise to a constitutional violation. The Constitution is not a suicide pact and no right is unlimited. The principle of exigent circumstances has long been recognized for just this reason. If a global pandemic doesn’t meet the definition of “exigency,” I don’t know what could. .

No one is being ordered to renounce their faith. You are still permitted to worship publicly and as a (modified) group through drive- in services if you and your church think that some form of “congregating” is necessary. Go ask Chinese Christians or Christians in Muslim or Hindu dominated areas of the world what religious persecution looks like. This ain’t it.

The mayor of Louisville tried at the local level to ban drive- in worship services. He was (correctly) slapped down by the courts. That’s not what’s been directed at the state level. The governor gives daily press briefings at five. If he’s said it once, he said it a thousand times: drive- in services are okay with a few guidelines. (Everybody stays in their own car, you can’t pass things from car to car, stuff like that.)

The duration of personal contact and the ability to adequately engage in social distancing in a church is different compared to maintaining it in a store setting. Given the wide disparity in the number of congregants and the physical sizes of church buildings, as a practical matter it would be impossible to come up with a single social distancing plan that works for all congregations. Walmarts, Costcos, and Home Depots are all built to roughly the same dimensions so they can easily put in place a policy that limits occupants to X number of customers per 1,000 square feet. When it comes to churches, the policy is “outside in your cars or online.” It’s the only practical directive that can work

The Marysville Baptist congregation, specifically the pastor, insisted that they were going to meet in person anyway, although they did set up loudspeakers so people could listen in the parking lot if they didn’t want to come in. Gov. Beshear outlined his options in his briefing yesterday or the day before when it became apparent that no amount of negotiation or explanation with these churches was going to convince them to move to online or drive- in services only. He could have done nothing. He could have arrested the pastor. (There is an appropriate misdemeanor charge for this.) He could have had the church closed by the health department and padlocked the doors.

What he decided to do seems to me like the least invasive way that he could handle it while still trying to protect the community at large. It also ensures that it upset everybody and probably won’t help. The services went on, but the people who attended are being told to quarantine for 14 days. The next step will be to see how far he goes in enforcing it when they inevitably defy the order to self- quarantine. At this point, if Covid- 19 is as contagious as believed, it’s too late. Bullitt County KY will see a spike of cases in the next 10- 14 days.

One thing to note that ties back into a column you wrote a few days ago about how churches like this one that insisted on holding in person services might be resented by society at large as the pandemic wears on and more people are found to have been infected by members of those churches is that somebody threw buckets of nails across the entrances to the Marysville Baptist parking lots sometime on Saturday night. They were discovered and cleaned up before the congregation started to arrive, but somebody in that community has already decided to escalate the situation. We’re only a few days away from the first one of these churches getting a Molotov cocktail through a window..

I actually have a little bit more of a personal stake in this than you know. My father, who is 71, pastors a small congregation in [town]. It’s a dying church, to be honest, made up almost entirely of the elderly members of two or three families. There are no young families with kids or a youth group. The building is old and small, in a seedier part of town. Attendance on Sunday morning is 30 or less.

My dad sees his role at this point of shepherding the flock until enough of the congregation finally passes away that the few who are left move to other churches. He visits them when they’re sick, performs the funerals, and keeps it going for as long as it can.

When Gov. Beshear first declared the state of emergency, he didn’t try to close in person worship the first week or maybe two. I went to my dad and told him he needed to cancel services anyway. I had been following the outbreak from before at Raconteur Report and other blogs since the beginning of the year.

He couldn’t do it. At the time, he and my mom were refusing to believe how dangerous it could be, but he also said that the congregation wouldn’t agree. These people are all elderly. Every one of them is sick or diagnosed with something. My parents are actually some of the youngest people there on Sunday. If Covid-19 got loose in that congregation, it would kill them all.

The next week Beshear canceled in- person services and I was grateful, because it meant that my 71 year- old father and 73 year- old mother were relieved of the burden of what would have been the equivalent of a suicide mission. My folks are in okay shape for their age, but mom’s had some heart issues and dad’s a (well- managed) diabetic. If they catch it, it will be no better than a 50- 50 proposition that they’d make it. For the vast majority of their congregation, the odds are significantly worse.

It is somewhat ridiculous that responding to a disease has become a Red vs. Blue political issue, with all of the attendant virtue- signaling on both sides, but here we are. It’s almost to the point that if you’re a “real” conservative or Christian, you have to deny that the disease is even a real thing.

At the end of the day, all I know is Gov. Beshear’s willingness to take the political hit and cancel in- person services made it so my dad could cancel his services without blowback from his congregation, removing the greatest chance he and my mother had to catch this thing and potentially die alone. I’m 44 years old, did 23 years as a cop, have a grown child of my own, and I’ve recently realized that I’m not ready to lose my mommy and daddy. So, ultimately, I am grateful to the governor for taking the hit.

Am I grateful enough to vote to re- elect him in 2023? Probably not. As my wife said the other day when we were watching one of his briefings, “He seems like a good guy and he’s doing a good job, but then I remember that he kills babies.” And she’s right. Abortion is a sacrament to him. That was true when he was the Attorney General and fought the previous governor’s attempts to shut down abortion clinics and it’s true now during the pandemic as abortion clinics remain essential medical services while all other types of elective medical procedures are banned, something that keeps being brought up by the most outraged people in my social media feeds.

So that’s one view from Central Kentucky. Personally, we’re healthy, well- provisioned, and financially secure for the moment. I pray that you, yours, and all the other reg’lar readers of your blog remain well.

From California:

To understand how things are now, here is how things were until two weeks ago. My four year old son has a diagnosis of autism. Where we live (California) that means he gets special education preschool, in-home behavior therapy, and we get four hours of babysitting once a week so we have some time to get out and relax a little. All these things have helped him improve a lot and our hope has been to get him in a regular classroom for kindergarten.

My wife and I have a difficult relationship. She is volatile and has a bad temper. I manage the best I can. With my job I had time away from home which helped me relax a little. If not for our child we would probably have a frank discussion about whether to stay together, but that would not be good for anyone, so we soldier on.

Now all that is gone. We are at home all day. My wife is terrified of the virus and doesn’t want to go out. I go out every few days for groceries. Our son has some online behavior therapy, but this isn’t the same. The school program coming out is mostly YouTube videos. He needs structure and contact with other people, and his behavior has been getting worse. This sets off my wife, which makes his behavior worse, which sets her off more. I go outside with him around the apartment complex for a little time each day, but that’s it for relief. There is no end in sight.

Again, we are much better off than many others. We have resources and maybe more self-control. Adults need work, and children need school for structure and a sense of purpose.

However I think the lockdown will continue for months. There are skeptics (Alex Berenson most notably) but they are dismissed out of hand. The social and economic costs are dismissed out of hand. The blue state governors and mayors were resistant to locking down, but now that they have they are enjoying the power, and so are the police. The economy will be destroyed, and the pieces bought up by billionaires with free money from the Fed (see Matt Stoller).

I hope I’m wrong……..

Stay healthy and stay sane.

From New Jersey:

I came across this link to a remarkable eBook, that music can and must be formative in social bonding and communal resilience. Please post it on your blog. I am starting to read this and illuminating…..curious to hear feedback from musicians in your blog….

Our priest Fr. Michael who is co-suffering with his wife at Saint Anthony Antiochian Orthodox Church in Bergenfield New Jersey is today slowly in recuperation from the coronavirus. This morning we had a virtual third hour morning prayer a communal ingathering through Zoom. This way a wakeup call for my soul to read via Zoom aloud psalm 16 to set the tone of life during those early Holy Week days when we mediate on the haunting naming of the followers of Christ as the sons of the Bridegroom….awaiting the Coming One at midnight.

It’s a book about Renaissance music written in response to plague. The author is Remi Chiu. The reader points to this Google books version, but if you want to read the whole thing, you should get it on Kindle. The book sounds like a fantastic Mars Hill Audio Journal interview.

From rural Virginia:

My pandemic life is one of contradictions. While work in DC for the federal government, I live in rural Va in the Blue Ridge Mountains on a small livestock farm. During this past month when I have been teleworking full time, the pandemic has been an unexpected blessing. I have gotten back the 5 hours per day that I am no longer commuting. Instead, I have used those 5 hours to get more sleep, spend more time with my family, do more cooking, spend more time on the farm and more time helping my daughters do distance learning.

We are blessed to live in multi-generational housing with my parents, my wife and our 2 daughters. Fortunately this farmhouse has plenty of space, including 4 deep freezers that were full of meat and other frozen foodstuffs. It was just part of our upbringing to have months of all kinds of supplies (food, household, etc) on hand at all times.

Rural rhythms revolve around the seasons, even with a pandemic raging. Calves are still be born, pigs are still eating, grass is growing. So far, livestock supplies are available. Though prices for livestock are dropping as slaughter plants close down across the country due to sick workers. The market for bulls (we are a seedstock farm that sells purebred bulls to cow-calf farms) has dried up as the market for calves has declined. We have sold some bulls on credit to long time customers.

I have repented for many of my pre-pandemic thoughts. As an example, we had a new, younger pastor start at our Southern Baptist Church. He wanted to upgrade the church’s sound system and set up a robust website to allow sermons to be viewed. I personally thought this was a waste of money when he put it in last fall. Now, I believe that he was doing God’s will to prepare our church to care for his flock during the pandemic. He has seamlessly been able to care for his flock even when we can no longer meet in person.

This pandemic has reinforced the importance of broadband internet. We have a weak DSL connection. Fortunately we are close to one of the few cell towers in our county, so we have been able to set up mobile hotspots so our daughters can do their video conferences with their teachers while I continue teleworking. Most of the people in our county are not so fortunate. Previously many people opposed cell towers because they did not like the way they looked. So the library parking lot or other church parking lots are popular places are popular places as students sit in their cars in order to connect online.

What really makes me scared about the pandemic is that my wife is a health care professional. She is still seeing patients, but has little personal protective equipment.

Easter was similar yet vitally different than years past. We had a church service, though online. We had a family meal with lamb, though with fewer family members. We cared for the livestock on the farm. We prayed for and felt the suffering of so many people around the world. This Easter may have been the best one I can recall because my daughters are learning and asking questions about our risen lord. By taking away many of the commercial trappings, we were able to more clearly focus on the mercy and justice of the cross and the hope and love of the empty tomb.

From suburban Michigan:

On the home front:

I live in a modest two bedroom condo with my wife and two young children. It’s crowded. My wife works in health care, but thank God is able to do all her work remotely right now. I’m always proud of her, but all the more so these days. My younger child (2) is the least phased by it all, but will sometimes will talk about friends and teachers from daycare. My older one (6) is having a rougher time, and that puts a lot of demand on us as parents. He needs us at our best right now, and frankly it is hard to do that while trying to keep my flexible but still full time job as well. Nearly all attempts to keep up with what the wonderful public school sends home (via an app) are failing, so we’re just focusing on some simple math (baking is great for this), reading, some writing and drawing, and above all bike riding. The reduced traffic has made this last activity so much easier and less scary.

That said, trying to keep two people working full time while raising two children in little space with no child care, school, library, playground, playdates, or grandparents is not actually possible. I don’t know any parent with young kids that is okay right now. I lack the capacity to fully describe what this is like, the intensity of it all. I suppose I should be grateful for the fact that I am not lonely or bored. But this is much too much to ask of nuclear families on their own. We’re certainly getting into more of a rhythm as this goes on, but I am not sure how sustainable this is if we end up bouncing in and out of lockdowns for a bit as now seems likely.

In my community:

I am so lucky to know my neighbors, to have a community here. In little, unexpected ways this community keeps helping us. A friend offered to go to the grocery store for us, we happened to have some old clothes a younger child needed which prevented one more trip to a store, etc. This sort of horizontal or mutual aid is priceless, but is is also not enough, as the long lines as food banks and crashing state unemployment insurance websites indicate. I’ve seen some older kids in the neighborhood running around together, and it both bothers me because we all need to do our part right now but at the same time I’m trying to leave some room for a bit of understanding and grace too. Who knows what goes on in those homes? Many are no doubt lovely and loving, but not all of them are. I worry about children trapped in houses with abusive parents, with addicts. Maybe they need to run through the park right next to their closest friend because the immediate alternative is worse, is riskier.

But there are others that I know personally, some close friends, who continue to flout the rules in substantive ways that I judge harshly. They have shown me exactly who they are, and when this moment of crisis has passed I fear I won’t be able to look them in the eye. I am not a judgmental person by disposition, but this is different. Our duty to one another is clear, and those who chose to fail in their duty will be remembered. Thankfully, the area I live in is apparently “crushing” the curve based on cell phone tower data.

Our bishop took the prudent step of closing church buildings weeks ago. I am so grateful for her leadership, and for her weekly sermons during this time. We are Episcopalians (or Anglicans for your non-US readers), and one of the great treasures of the Anglican tradition is something called the Book of Common Prayer which was, among other things, a Reformation era attempt to make some of the rhythms of monastic life available to the laity. You have written before about the Orthodox view of the home as a sort of little monastery, and that deeply resonates with Episcopalian/Anglican sensibilities. We have regular zoom based services with our extended family, and did what we could at home during Holy Week–which turned out to be quite a lot! None of it is in any way a satisfactory substitution of receiving the sacraments or for corporate worship, but Jesus rose from the dead two millennia ago and nothing we do or fail to do will change that fact.

Broader sociopolitical concerns:

As the federal government continues to deny the state I live in much needed aid to confront this virus, I keep thinking about that famous passage from the end of After Virtue:

“A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead – often not recognizing fully what they were doing – was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness.”

To hell with the Empire. What good is an Empire that can fly F-35s over my head but tells me to make a mask out of scraps of cloth to fight a pandemic? What loyalty do I owe a government that, through neglect, tries to kill me and my neighbors while continuing to enrich the most powerful simply because my governor did not bow and scrape sufficiently before Dear Leader? This is just absolute madness and further confirms my most cynical assumptions about the world. How many people in North America today find themselves turning aside from the task of shoring up the current imperium without even realizing it?

And yet, through all that worry and fear about the broader social and economic implications, I get to spend a lot of time with the people in this world that I most want to spend time with. I know not everyone can say that during this pandemic, and truly I am grateful.

From New Jersey:

The atmosphere here has been building in intensity. Two weeks ago I went grocery shopping for my own family, and one week ago I went back to the same store for my mother in law. In the space of that one week, things seemed to have changed drastically — on my first trip, I felt things were safe, clean, and well-controlled (lots of sanitizing, social distancing, etc.), but it all felt relatively normal, and people were cheerful. On the second trip, everyone was kept 10 feet apart in line, waiting to enter the store; almost everyone had a mask on; the cashiers were protected by a plastic shield surrounding the check out booth. In general, the atmosphere in the store was much less friendly and far more tense.

Yesterday, Easter Sunday, was a strange and beautiful day. All of Holy Week, and most of Lent, felt extremely heavy. Although the quarantine has not changed my daily life drastically, as I am a homeschooling mother with four young children, the question of what to do about Easter hung like a cloud over the past few weeks. Every year, we celebrate Easter in the exact same way: we attend a high Tridentine Mass (one we have attended for 20 years) with my parents and siblings, and then spend the rest of the day celebrating at their house. One of my children spent weeks in extra anticipation, because his birthday fell on Easter Sunday this year, and he was delighted at the idea of a double celebration with the whole family.

Holding the space and trying to create a reverent atmosphere for small children during streamed services and prayer at home through the second half of Lent and Holy Week was very challenging, and the prospect of creating both Easter and birthday festivity under the circumstances seemed daunting. Tears from two of the children over not being able to attend Mass and visit grandparents added to the stress, and pushed back bedtimes, and the last minute decorating and preparation kept me up till after midnight on Holy Saturday. When I finally collapsed on the sofa with the baby, I was full of doubts about whether I had done enough, and somewhat dreading the following day.

But as soon as small feet hit the stairs at daybreak, it was Easter! And nothing — not a virus, nor social distancing, nor “principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come” could change that. The two oldest tumbled into the living room, full of excitement and anticipation, but with no idea what to expect, only sure that it was going to be wonderful.

And it was. Everything was. We dressed up, despite being at home all day; we did our best to participate in our streamed Mass, despite my dislike of combining religion and technology; we enjoyed each other’s company, and homemade treats, and a simple but special dinner. The children played cheerfully all day, and we spent some time outside in the sunshine. In a lot of ways it was no different than many of our other days for the past month, except that the joy was just so palpable — and it was not because of anything we had done — it just was, because Easter had come, and Christ is risen, and none of that depends on our own feeble efforts. Although none of us would ever have chosen to have this experience, it feels a bit like a gift, to have had the opportunity to realize the essential holiness and beauty of the day, to celebrate a mostly interior Easter.

From Slovakia:

I am writing from a village in Slovakia, population around 800. I myself am Estonian, but married to a Slovak and have lived here for about 15 years.

I have been reading your blog since Trump’s election and have found it very thought-provoking, including the excellent comments section. Thank you for giving space for the pandemic diary, it makes the whole situation seem more real – there are real people out there, living their lives in this strange new situation, it’s not just about numbers – infected, dead – and graphs.

The situation here in Slovakia is not so bad, at least for now. It is amazing how quickly most people were able to accept the fact that life had to change. It has been a month now since schools were closed and everything else non-essential. The measures were taken when Slovakia had just a few cases. As of today, there are 769 people infected, 2 dead. Everyone has to wear a mask when leaving home. A month ago it was impossible to buy surgical masks, so people got out their sewing machines. Very soon you were not allowed into supermarkets without masks. I still haven’t been able to get my hands on any disinfectant gel or antibacterial soap, that’s vanished. The same goes for gloves…

The corona crisis flared up right after elections here. Now we have a new prime minister, the very opposite of an elder statesman… I don’t envy the situation he has found himself in. His slightly hysterical and urgent eagerness is rubbing a lot of people the wrong way, especially when he decided to ban all travel (except for work, groceries and a few other reasons) from the Wednesday of Holy Week until Easter Tuesday. The first day of the ban saw people sitting in traffic jams, filling out forms… That was not popular. But the next days were better, as the police stopped checking each car. The reason for the ban was that for Slovaks, Easter is very much a family affair, with Good Friday and Easter Monday both public holidays, and people move all across the country to go visit parents and other relatives. But not this year, everyone stayed at home…

Of course no church on Easter either. The last time I went to Mass was March 8… I am glad we made it to confession as a family that first week of March. It makes sense to me that public Masses cannot take place at this point. But confession… Surely it could be arranged in some responsible and safe way? Some priests are hearing confessions, were hearing them from morning till evening before Easter (people are used to going to confession before Christmas and Easter, but also on first Fridays), others are not… I get a little rebellious now and then. But this leaves me anxious and irritable. So I make an effort, again and again, to accept the situation as it is. Christianity is so much more than just going to church, God is not limited by the sacraments. This is surely an opportunity to be cured from all entitlement and consumerist attitudes towards our faith. The stories you shared about the Slovak, Russian, Romanian Christians suffering in Communist prisons meant so much to me, it was like a ray of light in the darkness of my interior grumblings.

In fact, I do see the current situation very much as a time of grace. I am a mother of five children, ages 12 to 1. I have been at home for 13 years and the life of a stay-at-home mother does not change that much even in quarantine. But nevertheless there has been a change, what with the older children being home from school and my husband working from home. We start the day as a family with Lauds and actually have lunch together (it’s the main meal here in Slovakia). And my husband does not have to spend 2 hours travelling to and from work, so he has finally time to think through the way we are raising our 4 sons. All of a sudden they have been put to work!

Easter was by no means sad, even though our own family version of the Easter vigil did not quite reach the heights of jubilation that we had been used to experiencing. It is strange to live without the Eucharist. But even without the sacraments, Christ is still risen. The joy we experienced was more interior, more intimate and simpler.

Spring is here, it has been warm and sunny. The hills are bursting into blossoms now, even though there is still snow on the mountains. What a blessing to live in a place where one can walk in any direction to find natural beauty and plenty of space (for social distancing, that is). It is almost as if there were no troubles in the world… But my mother in Estonia has started chemotherapy. The situation is worse there and I know we can be struck by this pandemics as so many other families in the world have been struck… And what comes after the virus?

A second entry from a diarist in British Columbia:

i pray that the healing hand of God rest upon you, and in that healing you experience the gracious love of God.

since my last post to you, not much has happened. small projects have been completed. Maunday Thursday, Good Friday and Easter have come and gone. like a low grade fever, boredom and restlessness have settled in as companions. I watch seedlings grow and feed sparrows.

i am a Mennonite. I belong to a progressive wing called Mennonite Church Canada which since 2017 has embraced doctrinal plurality — acceptance of gay marriage, as well as several other social ethical stances that i find deeply disconcerting. I have sought to ponder why it is that i have found myself out of step with my denomination.

I am a graduate of our denominational seminary, and just prior to the onset of pandemic i met with the current president of our bi-national Seminary to discuss with him returning my Masters of Divinity degree. My disillusionment is that serious.

In 1992 i graduated, and then 1993 i went to work for a Mennonite Humanitarian aid agency in the former Soviet Union. There i had the opportunity to rub shoulders with men and women who had suffered deeply for their faith. That experience of listening to their witness, breaking bread with them, being interrogated by them when i was new led to a long, intermittent re-evaluation of the philosophical underpinnings of my faith-theology.

And i saw, up close, evil.

in college i had read paolo freire, jose miranda,– all the liberation theologians and drank deeply from those wells. Some years later, when in Russia, i sat with the children of those who had suffered for their faith, and was largely (but not completely) deaf to their conversations about truth, refusing to live in the lie– confessing Christ.

Later, over time i sat with my mother (born in Ukraine under Stalin) and listened more attentively to her stories and began to see a pattern. Judas stories, and sinner on Golgotha stories, stories in my family that somehow paralleled biblical themes.

And i read.

One of the criticisms of my faith tradition is that it tends toward pelagianism (self-salvation) and i found myself seeing the truth of that concern. Too much emphasis on self-willed do-gooderism, and not enough seeking to wait and obey the Spirit of Christ.

There is something profoundly wrong with a faith tradition that ignores its confessors and martyrs.

When i have shared these concerns, i have been chided–too traditional, too creedal. “God is bringing forth a new Pentecost.” In my confession (national organization) right living supersedes in every way creedal affirmation. I found myself pondering the early church fathers (i am a rank amateur) and sensing that creedal orthodoxy is not a by-line, but a foundation stone. compassion can not, ought not, will not do away with the foundation of a universal and holy Truth.

Solzhenitsyn’s insight that if a lie is your principle, violence must be your method. The opposite is true. If Truth is your principle, love is your method: has troubled me for years. Troubled as in i have thought about it, questioned the truthfulness of my denominations’ remembering.

so in these days of pandemic my theological isolation within my national communion feels somehow accentuated. One pastor has called for a one time tax on the rich, to give to the poor — a kind of secular jubilee. i observe that a secular jubilee has justice without reverence for the sovereignty of God, and that the goal of Christian charity is not the giving or receiving of a good, in the first instance, but each (giver and recipient) coming close to God. The gift, given or received is a token of the Spiritual reality–intimacy with God. It seems that my brothers and sisters are proclaiming a gospel without Christ, that Engels and Marx would have agreed to….

i am sorry not to have a story of greater spiritual depth to share. I sense somehow that the flaws in my faith tradition are being laid bare that we might repent: only to find my brothers and sisters persisting in a pelagian path that will lead to exhaustion. My spiritual dullness perhaps a testament to my, and of my faith tradition.

A recent article on scripture seems like a veneer of piety that will hide a justification of social justice agenda, rather than a deeper obedience and mystical union with God. We cannot save ourselves, the atonement of Jesus Christ is an act and mystery of God. And the apprehension in part, of that mystery is also a grace.

Lord Jesus Christ. Son of God. Have mercy on me, a sinner. strengthen your servant to walk in a deeper obedience to the mystery of your unfailing love, through Jesus Christ, my risen Lord..

From Texas:

My son’s wedding was scheduled for Saturday, March 21.

What a week.

Both families have significant out of town relatives —on our side a sizeable NOLA contingent, while the bride’s mom, from Long Island, had oodles of family coming.

Our celebrant was traveling from Paris, my cousin Père David.

I’m trying to remember which day it was — Wednesday March 11? When Trump delivered a prime time address announcing a travel ban with Europe, to go into effect midnight Friday March 13. My son flew into action, calling Fr. David to see if he could/would leave earlier.

I had another French uncle already here for the wedding. He came March 10 to visit friends in Philadelphia, Washington and Boston before coming to us.

That weekend began the great unraveling: first, the drip-drip-drip of out of town guests/relatives cancelling.

Father David, who loves an adventure, landed at JFK two hours before the travel ban went into effect.
I will never forget the feeling of peace and joy that washed over me when I saw him alight from Ian’s car— I knew then everything would be okay. We would have a wedding, even if it was in my living room with 10 people.

So began our unforgettable week, our only extended family being represented by the far flung French branch. Mass at home on Sunday followed by brunch with both families— some 15 of us— was very moving.

Day by day, as another piece of our wedding plan collapsed, we threw ourselves into improvising some new solution— only to have that collapse a few hours later. Honeymoon to South Africa: cancelled Tuesday; Substitute Hawaii honeymoon collapsed Thursday.

Rehearsal dinner shrank from 80 people to 25. Then the restaurant closed. So…let’s have it at our house. Then a friend offered her house. Oh thank God.

Friday morning March 20. My Uncle and I are moving furniture out of my friend’s living room to set up tables for 30. My husband is mixing a giant batch of margaritas. By midday, we get news from my parish pastor that as of midnight Friday, a new guideline goes into effect, limiting gatherings to 10 people (the current one, for which we have already made Herculean adjustments, allowing for 50).

By 2 pm Friday I get word that the wedding will take place that night at 8:30, after the church is closed.

We all dressed in our finery, had a scaled down procession, with musicians and a sprinkling of loved ones. Every other pew was roped off with yellow caution tape. The maid of honor had a boom box at the ready after the ceremony, so that the couple could take their first dance together, “Into the Mystic,” Van Morrison.

Then we all departed for what became the wedding banquet.

Nothing went as planned, but it was a beautiful week and wedding. We didn’t have family, but we had our Frenchmen with us at the house. I had put up in the freezer quite a few casseroles to provide for out of town guests, so I just pulled out one thing after another to keep us fed. It was like having a dinner party every single night.

We didn’t have a wedding reception but we had a banquet. My friend Ana’s tres leches cake, made for our rehearsal dinner, became the wedding cake.

All was improvised. Yet, we were all cognizant Of the greater plan at work. They had chosen, as their wedding gospel, Matthew 7:21, 24-29…the rains came, the wind blew, but the house was set on firm foundation.

Father David’s homily was sublime. He referred to our Joy as a survivor of this catastrophe.

My mom offered her house in Cashiers, North Carolina for a honeymoon. The bride and groom spent their day-after gathering all they would need for a week without leaving the house, and off they went, for a much needed break from the craziness.

Our Frenchmen returned home.

My heart was full to bursting after all of it.

We are all well and recovered…may you recharge and recuperate as well.

He is Risen!

What a day of fascinating diary entries. Thank you all! Please, readers, let me hear from you. I’m at rod — at — amconmag — dot — com. Put PANDEMIC DIARIES in the subject line. Don’t forget to say where you’re from. As a rule, I don’t care for political argumentation in these entries, but I will be tolerant if it comes across as simply expressing frustration, not as trying to start an argument. I am pleased to host actual political arguments on this blog, but Pandemic Diaries is not the place for that.