TALITHA’S TAKE
Dear Church Family,
This is a time of remembrance. The anniversaries have been creeping up on us slowly — the anniversary of the first confirmed Covid19 case in the US, the anniversary of the first death, the anniversary of the last vacation you took, or the last office party you attended — but by the end of this week we will be past many of these “firsts” and “lasts” and will have to accept the fact that we are well more than a year into this pandemic. For many, there will be more anniversaries to come: the anniversary of a loved one who died sometime over the past 365 days as one of the more than half a million in the US alone. The scope of this pandemic is mind-boggling. If you had shown me an image, last year, of what an average day this year would look like, I doubt I would have believed you.
I took a time of remembrance yesterday and scrolled through the MPC videos, all the way back to our first service a year ago, when we recorded in the sanctuary while staying three feet apart and not wearing masks (according to the guidance at the time). My hair had been recently cut. It was just me, Ben, and Marcia putting that service together. It took a few weeks for us to figure things out, but many of you started sending in videos to participate in Celebration, and we started zoom meetings and coffee hour. We started using phonecalls a lot more, and we made many a contactless delivery, especially to the homes of children and youth. We figured out ways that our soup kitchen service work could continue, without putting a group of people in the kitchen together. We struggled through session meetings and congregational meetings on zoom, and slowly but surely, we got the hang of it. We survived a record-breaking fire season and days of power shutoffs. We formed a “reopening taskforce” that got us nearly ready to begin small group in-person gatherings last fall, only to be stalled when covid cases increased again. And we got through a dismal winter, with unbelievable suffering and death all around us, to arrive at this spring, where hope blossoms around us with the advent of three highly efficacious vaccines.
Be gentle with yourselves. You may have become an expert at sourdough baking during this time, or you may have just survived. Some families have come closer than ever, while others have seen conflict heat up to the boiling point. Some people struggle with guilt for not being able to protect themselves and their families from the virus, while others have a kind of survivors’ guilt about feeling safe while others are unsafe. Some of us experienced more stress than ever, while others experienced great boredom (and interestingly, we have found that boredom affects the body in many of the same ways as stress).
We continue to pray and to cry out to God for healing; not just healing for those who are sick, but healing for all of us from the trauma of having lived through this pandemic. This experience will live with us, and in us, for a long time. It will take a long time until our teachers, students, grocery store workers, and nurses feel the release and relief of real safety again. As we work through the knots of this tangled trauma, the ugliness of racism will need to be addressed over and over again, from the anti-Asian bigotry that has accompanied the virus from its beginning, to the anti-Black racism that sent us pouring (carefully) into the streets and onto the sidewalks last summer. This year has marked us in terrible and complicated ways.
As we begin our long healing journey, I hope we will find and pay attention to the ways in which we have been marked for good, as well. Gold stars to those of you who fed your families and neighbors well with homemade sourdough. Kudos to everyone who has discovered an inner strength they did not have before. Long-distance high fives to everyone who used their time to delve into anti-racist work and study groups. Don’t dismiss these as trivial; every little bit of health contributes toward healing.
May you be aware, this Lenten season, of God’s healing presence within each of us, as we struggle to begin truly recovering from this terrible year.
Every Blessing,
Talitha