Refraction

Things I observed today.

This, in my kitchen. The glass of water on the windowsill produced the rainbow in the sink, in the late afternoon, as the sun streamed in from the western sky. 

A small moment, I guess, in the days of the big concerns and worries. But one that made me stop and wonder for just a moment. I'm sure there's some physics of light involved -- refraction through the water, the curved glass -- but the science makes it more wondrous, not less. 

My morning devotion, again from "Lent Is Not Rocket Science," by W. Nicholas Knisely, was about the special light of sunrise, special because of the way it's filtered through more of the earth's atmosphere. The question at the end was, "Will you pause today to see beyond the the first impressions and see the poetry of what is before your eyes?" and "What do you see?"

It's a good writing prompt, and since it was a warm for the season, sunny spring day, there were good things to see. Lots of people out walking their dogs throughout the day, past our church atrium, where I worked for much of the afternoon. Lots of runners out too. 

We're all keeping our distance, but I had to brave the grocery store this afternoon. I did my share of bobbing, weaving and swerving so as not to get too close to other people. My face, like many around me, was fixed, mouth closed, resolute. Get what I needed, or get what I could, and go home. After a while, though, I tried to smile across the social distance, when someone looked at me and I looked back. I smiled extra hard, or tried to smile extra warmly, to cross that scary gulf, the one that might too easily turn into fear of one another. 

I voted, too, again keeping social distance in mind and washing my hands well when I got home. I discovered that I had inadvertently cut in line when I entered the polling place -- misinterpreted what those distances meant. When I realized this and apologized, the two women now behind me smiled graciously, said it didn't matter, and we agreed, "It's all good."

I know this is not what the world was like for everyone on whatever day this of COVID-19 comes to America. Some of you struggled through another day of e-learning with children who must have been tempted by the sunshine. Some of you had your own aggravations with work (and I had some of those, too). Many folks were working at grocery store and at Walgreens, and in many places doing the things necessary to keep us all going. It can't be easy. It can't be easy to be elderly and isolated these days. It can't be easy to be a healthcare worker preparing for the onslaught. 

I observed myself often today, rattled by dreams, rattled by memories, not at all sure of how to meet the days ahead. But it was good to observe this, to name this, before springing into action. Stopping, observing, listening, watching, and occasionally muttering something about being grateful for the hard times as well as the easy ones, I found some measure of peace, some sense of living in the presence of God. And of God's presence reflected and refracted through me. 

Bigger -- because

My church live-streamed the worship service this morning -- if "worship" is what you call a Service of the Word in a sanctuary with no people in the pews, just an organist and a singer in the balcony and a preacher, a presider, an assistant minister and a lector in the chancel.
A friend commented this afternoon in an email about -- what else? cancelling plans:
Watched most of it, and was moved by how reassuring--and powerful--it was to be reminded that something bigger than us, bigger than the coronavirus, is at work in the universe, caring for us.
I wouldn't know about how it was to watch the livestream, because I was the lector, and my mood is never improved by watching myself later on video. A screen shot on Facebook showed me at the lectern with a pale face and frizzy hair. I should perhaps have heeded that twinge of vanity last night that asked, makeup in the morning?

As the church communications staff person, I was also the copier-and-paster of links—onto Facebook, a web page, email, all complicated by a little technical problem (no audio) that meant we started the whole thing over -- at a new URL -- about 15 minutes in.
This was the first time our service was live-streamed. Plans had been in the works for a while, with a scheduled debut of, what do you know, March 15. Apparently God had a hand in the timing. With gatherings of more than 50 people shut down for the next couple months, YouTube and Facebook and, God help us, Twitter, will have to get better at reminding us of things bigger than us, bigger than the coronavirus. And since we are the ones who provide the content for social media, that means we ourselves will need to get better at thinking bigger.

This evening it all feels like a dystopian movie to me, and frankly, I'd like it to end and the credits to roll, so that I can get up and walk out of the theatre into a bright sunny day in another place and time. (Denial is not just a river in Egypt.) I've planned and started knitting projects today, talked and texted with friends and family, struggled to get ahead or simply catch up in Scrabble games on my phone, and wondered and worried about everything from is it okay to pick up my new glasses at Walgreens to the global economy. These worries, and new ones are likely to reappear in a few hours -- long before the alarm goes off in the morning.

I grew up believing things work out somehow and I myself could rise to meet any challenge. Decades of experience have dimmed my optimism. Does this have something to do with what Paul wrote in Romans 5:1-11, about suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope -- and "hope does not disappoint us"? Those last words were an anchor for me when my son was diagnosed with ALS in 2014 and died in 2017. Early this morning, as I practiced reading them out loud, I noticed there was no period after "us," and I was going to have to vocally connect that wonderfully rhetorical crescendo leading up to hope into yet one more clause before the paragraph ended:

Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

I don't think I succeeded in doing this during the reading this morning, at least not with the little trick that worked so well in the kitchen while the coffee was brewing, but there it is: "because God's love." The thing that makes us bigger.

Social distancing, day one

Saturdays are days when I often do nothing, or get nothing done. I'm more likely to engage in purposeful behavior on a Sunday afternoon. Today, Saturday, March 14, day one of social distancing in my neck of the world, is no different. So far:

1. Started a shopping list so that in one more trip to the grocery store, where I need to pick up a prescription, I can also get all the things I need so that I can stop going to the grocery store.

2. Took the Enneagram test, because I thought it would maybe provide insight and help me think about things in all the thinking time ahead. Also, didn't have anything more pressing to do. My highest score was a tie for Type 1 and Type 5; my second-highest score was a tie between 6, 3, 4, 2 and 8. The PDF file I received via email with my results is 37 pages long. Apparently I contain many worlds.

3. Met my neighbor across the street via text messaging. She was responding to a note I left on her porch before Christmas with a package that had been delivered to my house by mistake. Said she'd been meaning to do that for a long time. Seems like we may get to know each other better. Curious that today was a day to make a new acquaintance.

4. Limited my news intake to 15-20 minutes of headlines on my phone before getting out of bed. Very effective for reducing anxiety.

5. Made gluten-free pancakes with Eliza. Okay to eat / but they ain't wheat.

6. Noticed the many corners and floors and cluttered spaces in my house that, were I to use my time at home profitably, ought to be thoroughly cleaned.

7. Thought about starting my taxes. Thought it about for maybe 10 seconds. Baby steps.

8. Thought about doing some yoga. Visualizing that now. I think late-afternoon light is best for yoga, don't you?

9. Read yesterday's and today's devotion from "Lent Is Not Rocket Science." Contemplated whether there might be life in other parts of the universe, and what this might mean. Five or ten minutes of cosmic thinking lightens my heart.

10. Read through the lessons for tomorrow's livestream worship service. Will need to reckon with Paul in Romans saying that suffering builds endurance, which builds character, which builds hope. Hope does not disappoint us. All true, but still hard in practice.