This time of year shouldn’t be so exhausting. These screens are starting to get to us!! I’m looking forward to “zoomless” days and more time to explore outside. Until then we will rest in knowing that Jesus Reigns (hymn of comfort).
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Each day, Wren will post a new hymn of comfort (we were inspired by Yo Yo Ma, who posts “songs of comfort each day on Instagram). Here are Wren’s first two:
In the 4 years since my sabbatical (when I tried to maintain this blog), things have changed. Some things changed slowly – like my 7 year old is now 11 – and then in recent days things have changed incredibly fast! My last post in 2016 was about how diseases emerge when we mistreat creation. I’ve been teaching for 20 years, and over those years, I’ve given many lectures on how diseases emerge. It’s always seemed urgent to me, but maybe not as urgent to my students? I don’t know. I can say, that even in my urgency, I realize now, that I honestly still felt like the danger of disease was far away. Even though, I’ve been in Uganda during an Ebola emergence, I’ve had close conversations with friends struggling with tuberculosis, and I’ve seen the front lines of the HIV/AIDS crisis; I never really felt very vulnerable. That’s my privilege. I tried really hard to live as a steward of creation and in ways that honored my neighbors, yet if I’m honest, I don’t think I believed that the impacts of my consumption of the earth’s resources would put my family or friends at risk. The consumption of resources always seemed to have an effect on “others”. How humbling it’s been to experience this new “leveled” landscape. We are all at risk. The healthcare I’ve taken for granted is vulnerable to being overwhelmed, and my privilege isn’t my security any more.
I need to find my security in Christ. This is the new landscape. When I feel anxious about a friend who has symptoms, or whether or not my students are safe, I need to remember that I’m not alone. I must place my trust in Christ. We’ve all been forced to reconsider the ways we live, and the things we take for granted. The day that it was announced that kids would be schooling at home, that recitals were cancelled, that we couldn’t go to New York to celebrate her birthday…Wren exclaimed: “WHY CAN’T WE TAKE CARE OF THE EARTH? We are we so stupid? We did this.” (for sure, “stupid” isn’t my favorite word…but it seemed appropriate in this context). She’s got it. We have a responsibility! We are called to love the Lord and our neighbors. Part of our response should be to do better by creation! The more important part is to start journeying across this new landscape with a stronger reliance on Christ! We are not alone. While we journey together through this crisis, we have each other – the community of Christ – and we now have time to examine how we journey together. Let’s put our faith in Christ, love each other, and care for creation!
Brooklyn on Fire by Lawrence Levy
I enjoy mysteries, but I find that I rarely choose a mystery on my own. My reading project has resulted in a nice selection of mysteries that I will be reading. I was interested in this book because I really enjoyed reading The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye and learning about Brooklyn in the 1800s. Brooklyn on Fireis set a few years after The Gods of Gotham. There is no comparison.
I am not reading books in any particular order for this project, so I have been delighting in the themes that emerge across seemingly unrelated books. As I read Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell, Telling Secrets by Frederick Buechner, and Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle I found myself reflecting on compassion.
I’m going to start with secrets – a bit of my life story. When I was in the 8th grade, I was sentenced to what turned out to be 2 ½ years wearing a Milwaukee brace for scoliosis. Life with the brace was very different than life before. I wish I could say that it wasn’t really bad (I know my parents still feel bad about this), but it was terrible. People constantly stared at me or asked inappropriate questions. My “friends” disappeared or began to bully me. You know it’s bad when you can’t even go to church without hearing nicknames or being pushed to the ground “because it’s funny to watch a kid in a brace try to get back up.” There were really only a few people that made fun of me (loud enough that I could hear), but their banter was constant. My nicknames included “hunchback”, “neck”, “crip”, and “old ironsides” (which I have to admit is fairly creative). What hurt more than the people who made fun of me, were the “friends” who never stood up for me. Even when my PE class spent an hour spitting on my back! Not a single person suggested that they stop – and certainly no one told me that I was being used for this foul target practice. Even as horrible as all of this seems, I don’t regret it. It sounds cliché, but it really did shape me. Compared to the experiences of many, these experiences are nothing! Why bother sharing these secrets?
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