Category Archives: Reflections

Christmas, COVID-19, Reflections

A Covid Christmas

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Following the Christian calendar, year after year, is like reading a favorite book over and over again.   We know the beginning, the middle, and the end so thoroughly that each scene is infused and intertwined with the rest of the story.  This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to enter the story at the beginning while suspending the knowledge of the ending.  After all it is the empty cross that ultimately provides the meaning for Jesus’ birth.  But this knowledge takes us out of the story into the privileged position of a spectator that knows the context and outcome. 

Today’s COVID Christmas is an ideal time to enter into the story.  But we need to try and “unknow” the ending.  Christ was born at time and place when hope was in short supply.  Israel was occupied and under foreign rule.  Jesus enters the story not as the grown up champion of Israel announced with great fanfare to the populace, religious leaders, and military/political leadership.  Rather, Jesus arrives as an infant, whose birth is announced to family (Elizabeth) and a select few.  The select few were not rulers, but shepherds.  The announcement however was glorious!  (Luke 2:8-18).   It was the lowly shepherds that spread the news.  Later Simeon and the Prophet Anna would see the baby Jesus and understand what they were seeing.  According to Matthew, Herod would learn about Jesus from foreign sources (Matthew 2:2), not from local sources.  

To those that are not related to Mary, select prophets, foreign wise men, or shepherds, the hope of Jesus enters as a faint whisper, perhaps a third or fourth hand story of a child, born weeks before, with some prophetic words spoken about His future.  These stories are easy to dismiss as rumors, but somehow, perhaps, eliciting a glimmer of hope.  To those sensitive to the Spirit of God might have perceived that there was something “in the air” that promised renewal. 

This COVID Christmas invites us to enter the story of Jesus’ birth, not as a shepherd, prophet, or wise man, but as a common person outside of Jerusalem or Bethlehem. Many of us are disconnected from in person worship, as a common person was often disconnected from the temple in Jerusalem.  There was no Christmas celebration; Christianity as a religion was something that occurs in the future. I suspect that Hanukah did not have the same emphasis as it does today.   There probably wasn’t the same amount of travel to get family together at the winter solstice as there is today.  Still, to a few, there was perhaps a glimmer of hope “in the air.” 

Today we in the United States are in a very dark period dominated by both political chaos and pandemic.  Yet there is a sense of “hope in the air.”  The hope for the pandemic arises in the nature of vaccines that will at least help lessen the burden of the pandemic.  The hope for the political crisis lies in the 4 year political cycle where a new administration takes power (even if the political debates and divisions continue).  The hope in the spiritual realm lies with an infant, too young to start His ministry, still unable to speak or walk, yet already making His presence known in the “spiritual air” of the era.  It is a start, a promise of what is yet to be, that there is “light at the end of tunnel.” Yet we still need to pass through the remainder of the tunnel.  Yes there is hope for what is yet unseen or experienced.

Today we seem desperate to make Christmas as normal as is possible.  Perhaps we think that minimizing the impact of COVID provides us with some hope.  This is a false hope.  True hope stands in the midst of the chaos and looks into the “spiritual air” to sense the stirrings of possibilities that the Holy Spirit is presenting.  Then our job is to align with the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps we should accept a Christmas that is not “normal,” so that we can reflect on the first Christmas as it actually occurred:  when something new entered the world.   Perhaps true Christmas is attempting to discern what the Spirit of God is doing today that will only become obvious in the future.

Have a great Covid Christmas.

COVID-19, Reflections, Science and Politics

Ode to an Unmasked Man

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Defiantly you marched into the supermarket, without a mask in an era of Covid-19.  No governor, no social pressure, no concern of neighbor would force you to wear a mask.  No sanitizing wipes will you use on the shopping cart.  No extra washing of hands will you tolerate.  Walking down the produce isle, watching people avoid you, getting out of your way, no 6 foot rule will you abide?   Does that make you feel powerful?  If others insist, let them scramble out of your path, “I am free, no one my motions to restrict” is your motto.  Standing by the meat isle as the masked 74 year old woman walks past, she trying to avoid you, and you oblivious to the risk you present, dare SARS-CoV-2 to infect her.  She has a better chance of surviving a game of Russian roulette than your infectious glance.   But that is her problem, not yours?  Like Cain in Genesis, the murderer, you ask, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  Of course the answer is yes, you just don’t get it yet.  You ignore the question.

How am I to think of you?  Perhaps you cannot afford a mask, but then, your confident stance, your defiant attitude seems to make this unlikely.  If you asked I would give you one.  Perhaps you have a psychological disorder that makes wearing a mask a generator of trauma.  But you stance is defiant, not concerned.  Your defiant stance, your cavalier attitude that we are all fools and you are the one who knows best, seems to argue against rational explanations.   All the experts are wrong, you are right, there is no risk, it is a conspiracy of the left.  Absorbed in your self-confined world, you accept no limitations of your own ego, I know best for everyone, seems to be your motto.  Yet that little piece of RNA we call SARS-CoV-2 knows none of this.  It has no brain, it has no intention, it has no purpose, it will infect all who absorb enough of it.  And you, oh mightily self-sufficient manly “ I will not wear a mask” soul, are nothing more than the transfer vehicle for an a hunk of RNA from yourself to an innocent person who just happened to be near you.  You are nothing but the vehicle for a microscopic piece of RNA, which has outwitted you.

Your refusal to accept the situation makes it more likely that you have the virus; you just don’t know it yet.   In the final accounting, how many lives will you be responsible for ending?  Is that a matter of pride for you?  If this is your attitude? I must assume you are affected.  Perhaps you are not, but since you are not taking precautions, you have a higher probability of being a carrier than that 74 year old woman you just condemned to death.

I tried to avoid you, but you made that difficult, was that deliberate?  Perhaps when you face St. Peter you will be faced with all the people you infected, and especially those you killed.  Perhaps I may be among them.  Do you feel powerful?  You are, we are, all of us are, we are also powerless.  The question we all face in this era is about our relationship to others.  Is it all about me?  Is my freedom worth other people’s lives? 

The choice:  wear a mask, or the 74 year old woman passing you by dies.  What is your answer?  Your answer says a lot about who you are.

(This was stimulated by my experience within a food store. It however conflates several instances that occurred during the same visit, but one make unmasked individual, whom I do not know…)

David A. Larrabee 5/14/2020