Category: Covoid 19 Pandemic

After writing the title of this post, the answer that came to mind immediately was, “Well duh, it’s a pandemic stupid.” Yes, pandemics are hard. Maybe the title should be, “Why is the pandemic so hard for the USA? “. It has become clear, relative to the rest of the world, the USA is experiencing a greater impact from coronavirus.
An immediate impulse is to place blame on the government, the president in particular. Perhaps blame is justified, but maybe my question is really about why is the pandemic so hard for American people? No doubt economic consequences, job losses, economic collapse are hard and Americans have not been immune to them. Those cannot be minimized and their impact may very well be long term, if not permanent. What is most interesting and puzzling is what appears to be the hardest part of the pandemic.
An outside observer reading news and social media would probably conclude the greatest hardship for Americans in the pandemic is adherence to guidelines,/mandates, to wear masks, social distance and wash hands. Data indicates adherence to those guidelines can effectively reduce the rate of infections and prevent spreading of the virus.
I fear the legacy of the pandemic for Americans will not be a horrific virus and its tragic death toll; but, the horrible and “unconstitutional” requirements to wear a mask, social distance plus the unfair consequences of closing bars, restaurants and churches.

Conversation between server and customer in Nashville, TN restaurant.

Him: “How late are y’all open tonight?”
Me: “Eleven o’clock.”
Him: “What? I used to hang out here until 3am!”
Me: “Yeah… Because of the virus, restaurants in Nashville get in trouble if they have people here after 11pm.”
Him: “That is so dumb. In Williamson county — just one county over — they have like NO restrictions. I was just there the other day… The restaurant was PACKED.”
Me: “Oh yeah? Stuff like that might be why the U.S. had 183k new cases just yesterday.”
Him: “That’s only because we’re testing so much.”
Me: “We had more new cases yesterday alone than most countries in the world have had TOTAL cases since the pandemic started… You think that’s just due to testing?”
Him: “Anyway, it’s not the CASES that count. It’s how many people die.”
Me: “Unfortunately, we lead the world in that category as well. We have 4% of the world’s population, and 20% of the world’s COVID deaths.”
Him: “That’s only because hospitals are calling things COVID that aren’t COVID to get more money. They get like $10,000 extra to treat COVID cases.”
Me: “So you think doctors are all lying about it to get extra money? I have friends who are doctors and nurses, and I’ve talked to them about it… They are not lying.”
Him: “You think if you ask people if they are embezzling money, they’re just going to say Yes?”
Me: “So ALL of them are just lying for extra money?”
Him: “It’s mostly the hospital administrators. THEY’RE the ones pressuring people to say everything is COVID.”
Me: “And you don’t think — if the doctors & nurses were being pressured to LIE about COVID diagnoses — that anyone would come forward and tell about it? That’s a pretty big conspiracy theory, right there…”
Him: “I have a buddy from the military… Committed suicide. Put a shotgun in his mouth, and killed himself. They marked down his death as being due to COVID-19.”
Me [thinks to myself: “That didn’t happen.”]: “Hmmm. Yeah, well… I have a feeling we’re going to have to shut down again soon…. We missed our chance to take this seriously when we shut everything down in March through May.”
Him: “Europe took it seriously, and now their cases are spiking again just like ours.”
Me: “They’re cases are spiking again in some places where they stopped taking it seriously. Germany has 80 million people, but they only have like 15,000 deaths (the actual number is 12,619 deaths).”
Him: “The only reason the European Union is doing better than us is because they’ve got less people than us.”
Me [considers saying “Fewer,” but decides to say]: “Dude, the E.U. has about 120 million more people than we do.”
Him: “Nope. I just looked it up the other day. We’ve got way more people.”
Me [pulls phone out]: “Hey Siri, how many people are there in the European Union?”
I show him the screen that says “447.7 million,” he says, “I don’t think that’s right,” and I kiss my tip goodbye.

BTW, don’t forget to buckle your seat belt.

Lent is an intensely penitential time as we examine our sinful natures and return to the God we have, through our own rebelliousness, hurt time and again. Lent is also an opportunity to contemplate what our Lord really did for us on the Cross…

I am a stranger to any formal observance of Lent. My spiritual heritage was non-liturgical and ignored the Christian calendar. If I had read the above description of Lent, my response would have been, “Yeah, that’s what we do every Sunday.”. In the intervening years, my spiritual journey has drawn me to a deeper understanding of the meaning and purpose of lent. I’ve still got a long way to go to catch up with my liturgical sisters and brothers.

Although, I’m not a stranger to lament, awareness of lament as an important part of one’s spiritual journey has come in relatively recent times. I have written several posts on lament which you can read HERE.
In my words from one of those posts: …lament is the natural, intuitive response of all humans to the reality of the brokenness in our world as seen and/or experienced in their lives. I would describe brokenness as anything that is wrong, perceived or otherwise….if you meet someone who has no capacity to lament, they would be labeled a sociopath. … my conclusion is that lament is a universal human emotional response to real or perceived wrong.

The irony of a pandemic emerging in this Lenten season has been the subject of much writing and commentary. Lent and lament go hand in hand. This Lent is unique, the Coronavirus pandemic has exposed our vulnerabilities and dashed illusions of independence and self-sufficiency in ways beyond our collective memory. If it weren’t so sad, it would be hilarious that the first responders were hoarders of toilet paper.
I expect those who embrace Lent seriously have found their observance deepened and more focused than usual. For those of us who are casual Lenten observers, (i.e. gave up Twinkies) it is an opportunity to embrace Lent/lament seriously. Even in the midst of increasing anxiety and peril, I am finding that I resist lament and opt for feel-good cliches:

• God will never give us more than we can bear.
• When the Lord closes a door he opens a window.
• As long as we’re in God’s will, we will be safe.
• If God brings you to it, God will bring you through it.
• God will put a hedge of protection around his people.
• This is just our cross to bear.
• God allows bad things into our lives so that he can turn it into good.
• God has given you this trouble to test your faith.
• God is trying to teach us something through this trouble.
• With God, everything happens for a reason.
• God is in control

I know, those cliches are sacred and they satisfy be-happy impulses and allow me to conceal my real fears. I think they are what Job’s friends would say. After all, won’t unvarnished lament diminish our witness to our neighbors? Doesn’t our piety and ministry depend upon stiff upper lips and courageous defiance.
Lee Camp’s latest post gives some helpful perspective. An excerpt follows, you can read the complete post HERE.

…something like a third of the book of Psalms is comprised of Lament Psalms:  bold and indignant; complaining and pleading; asking God where God is, sometimes profanely. There is no emotional avoidance here. No false sense of machismo. And sometimes they are shockingly impertinent: “why don’t you wake up up there, and come down here and show us a little mercy?”

This posture of complaining is not a sign of unbelief, but precisely a manifestation of faith. The lamentations arise precisely because the complainer does believe that the Master of the universe can, and has, in dramatic times past, worked wonders. So why now the absence? Why now the cursedness, the loss, the death?

The laments are one reason I find I can believe. They are true to human experience. They evoke a sort of sadness and weary grief which we know to be real. Yet they refuse stubbornly to despair, refuse stubbornly not to see some awe, some transcendent beauty in it all. And they refuse to believe, even in the midst of all that weary grief, that we have been left alone.

I suspect, many are like me. The pain and discomfort of stay-at-home and quarantine has mostly produced compliant and whines. If predictions are accurate, we will soon find our complaints, whines and soothing cliches to be wanting. Facing the reality of utter helplessness we will voice our grief in deep lament to our only HOPE.

If God expects us to trust Him completely, how must he feel when we are reluctant or refuse to lament over real pain and suffering but freely complain about inconveniences? I would not presume to be God, but I might feel like a vending machine. It seems to me lament may be the purest expression of faith. Trusting when there are no answers. Where do we take those questions if not to God?