The past month, for me, began with some period of feeling totally numb and paralyzed. It all felt so surreal for a while, like death does. Like something you'd wake up from and discover it was just a dream. But a month has now passed...We're still in uncharted territory. That's an overused expression, but I think it actually works here. These weeks have been different from the days after 9/11, or of personal loss, or of the days after the Boston Marathon bombing. At least for me they have. I have no real reference points from life before COVID-19 to make sense of this post COVID-19 experience.
I must add (as I do whenever I'm asked how I'm doing) that I am so clearly experiencing all of this from a place of incredible privilege. Both my wife and I are working remotely, from a comfortable home, with no loss in income and probably lowered expenses. We may feel stir-crazy, but we have our health and we are safe. Our nest is empty; yet as much as I miss our grown sons every single day, I'm glad they have their own spaces, and their own work, and that they are also safe. My heart goes out to colleagues with young children who are doing what I'm doing but also trying to balance that with parenting and sharing space. I'm sure that's overwhelming. Not to mention those who are out of work, and those who are unsafe in their own homes, and those who are sick and dying.
All I can really reflect on is what I can see, from where I stand (or in fact, most of the time, sit.) But as time goes on, my brain moves on from disbelief to questions. What is there to learn from all of this? What am I noticing about myself and others in the midst of it? I'm pretty confident that there is no going "back to normal" again and I'm embracing that. But what I am trying to do is begin to get some sense of what a "new normal" might look like, even if it's premature to flesh that out yet.
What has happened for me beyond those initial early weeks of feeling like I'd been hit by a train has been a desire to begin to just pay attention. I write these posts mostly for myself anyway, because writing helps me to think and also to remember. But perhaps others will find some resonances here as well, which is why I'm happy to share them. I would be grateful to hear how your experiences and learnings are both similar and different from mine.
I am certain that as soon as I click "publish" on this post I'll have second thoughts, and third thoughts - or at least new insights. This is not finished. I'm not reflecting back on something that happened, but trying to reflect on something that is very much still unfolding - something we are still in the middle of. We've been trying to flatten the curve but what happens if we try to "get back to normal" prematurely and the whole thing starts up again? There are a lot of unknown unknowns.
But I also need to do this kind of interior work, beyond immediate crisis management. I prefer this stage, if that's what it is, to immediate crises, which I find so incredibly disorienting. Perhaps this post will spark some conversation, even if it's mostly internal dialogue with myself. So here goes:
1. I have never been prouder to be among the clergy in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts. I've been a priest in this diocese for twenty-two years. Throughout all of that time, we regularly gather four times a year: for a fall and winter clergy day, to renew our ordination vows on the Tuesday in Holy Week and for Clergy Conference. This year we renewed our vows on Zoom in a truncated, but very powerful liturgy. There, and in the weekly video-conference meetings our Bishop has been hosting, I've seen vulnerable, authentic, real human beings. No grandstanding, or at least very little of it. For those who don't spend a lot of time with clergy, this is a welcome and perhaps new thing. Our preacher at Renewal of Vows reminded us that there has been a leveling, and we are all learning together There is no room for an aging priest to lecture a baby priest on "how things used to be, back in the day." This has been a great gift. Often when I'm in a congregation I'm there to preach or there with the bishop who is preaching and presiding. It's rare for me to see so many colleagues "in action." I've joked that every time I go on Facebook, several of them are live! Each has found different ways to respond, not surprisingly. Some are more comfortable than others with social media platforms. But all are seeking to be faithful in a difficult time and I have incredible respect for that. It's allowing us to strengthen community.
2. Keeping the Sabbath holy really is possible, and it has never been more important to do so. I never thought I'd say this, but I am missing my commute on the Mass Pike. Really. Because in that space, in my car (usually with music playing) I had transition time built in to each day. Occasionally I'd take calls, but I tried to never do that in both directions. Working from home seems great, and it is in many ways. And I'm grateful for work that can be done this way. But there are less clear boundaries between work and home life. My wife has also been working remotely, so we are sharing our living space in new ways. For me it has become even more necessary, therefore, to create a "space in time" when I'm not at work, which has the danger of becoming 24/7. There is a reason we limit our kids' screen time, and Zooming from 8 am to 6 pm may be necessary for a season. But it isn't good on the eyes, the body, or the soul. My colleagues in parochial ministry are working harder to figure out how to spread the good news right now and I watched them take on Holy Week in powerful ways. Yet this makes rest even more vital, and it's not something our culture - even too often church culture - values. But we must learn to mark time in new ways so that we don't confuse work and life. If God could rest on the seventh day and say "enough" and if our Jewish friends can keep the Sabbath holy, so, too can we who claim to follow Jesus in the Way of Love. And we must.
3. Virtual coffee hour may be more fun than the way we've always done it. I keep hearing from lay people and clergy alike that they are not only trying to make worship work on-line, but that they are also doing coffee hour as well. Now over the past seven years, I've been a guest (and not the pastor) at many coffee hours. (The ones in person, I mean.) The coffee is almost always too weak for my taste and there are always way too many carbs and sugar on the table being pushed by someone who proudly baked them. No one wears a name tag because "we all know each other" here. (I've perfected the blank stare at this comment, when I have no idea with whom I'm speaking. Sometimes I say, 'I'm Rich Simpson" and they say, "I know who you are!") So coffee in your own home, with a screen and lots of people with name (tags!) attached: is this how they do coffee hour in heaven? It also breaks up the small group of insiders over in the corner. And it makes gossip much harder although if you wish you can still have a side-bar chat. But in all seriousness (and I am being quite serious now) as with number one this is about building authentic community. I think when we do get back to gathering in person some people may still prefer to do coffee hour virtually. But the real challenge will be to remember what we've learned and do it in new ways.
4. Church really is about the people, not the building. I learned this in Sunday School. And yet too much time at too many vestry meetings is focused on the buildings, and trying to maintain buildings that worked in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. We get sidetracked from doing the work to which we are called in the twenty-first century. The disruptions that this pandemic is causing in detaching us from the buildings for a season may help us eventually to remember this truth and act on it, as long as we don't rush back there as quickly as possible at the end of all of this to sit in the same pew we've always sat in. The building is made for the people; not the people for the building. And the buildings are meant to serve the larger ministry, not be the only ministry. It has always been true, but it's a hard truth to reach gradually. We have a congregation in our diocese - one of the healthiest and most interesting - that had to deal with the collapse of one whole side of their building one year. They moved out and into a pub on Sunday mornings. Kudos to them. But it's much harder for a vestry to decide to do that if it isn't because of a catastrophic event. In most mainline denominations we need fewer buildings to do the work to which we are called in this time and place. If we do this right we may find ourselves more open to that possibility. But we cannot be in a rush to return to "normal" or we'll miss it.
5. Disruptive change levels the playing field. My friend and colleague who preached this year at our Zoom Renewal of Vows Service noted that since we are all in uncharted territory, it matters less who has been ordained for forty years and who has been ordained for two months. None of us learned how to do this work in seminary. Which means that we are all now learners together. That's a wise statement and I've been in too many settings where the "old timers" love to tell the newbies how things should be done, or how they used to be done in the "glory days." And, to be honest, the reverse happens too: where people ordained a minute and a half seem unaware of how much they still have to learn and that it takes the Holy Spirit a while to make a priest, longer than just the time the Bishop lays hands on their head. This kind of experience challenges our myopia and makes us learners together, always with God's help. I learned the language about seven years ago when I transitioned from parochial to diocesan ministry of traditioned innovation and disruptive innovation. Simply put, there are times when gradual change rooted in the cultural context works, and I admit I'm way more comfortable with that kind of incremental change. But there are times when disruptions cause radical, more revolutionary change. When change is forced. This is normally not the kind of change the average Episcopalian likes. But sometimes, when we can't always get what we want, we get what we need.
6. Regardless of what General Convention may say, there is life after 1979. I was attracted to, and welcomed into, a Eucharistic-centered denomination shaped by the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. It's clear in the vision behind those liturgies that Holy Eucharist became the normative liturgy for Sundays. And not without costs. Because while I admittedly came in after the fact, I saw the pain that what felt like a disruptive innovation to many congregations caused. They liked Morning Prayer three Sundays a month! And generations of Episcopalians had been shaped by the 1928 Prayerbook and the ones that came before it. It seemed to many of those folks that The Episcopal Church was becoming "too catholic." As I said, I came in after all of that. So I will mourn the loss of this relatively new norm of weekly Eucharist, but it's upon us for lots of reasons, and this pandemic has given us a glimpse of what is to come. Watching folks freak out about that as if without the Sacrament they can't be Episcopalians is troubling. Eucharist is important, to be sure. But we are a tradition rooted in Word and Sacrament and perhaps we have neglected the Word a bit over the past forty years. We will get beyond this pandemic but when we do, we still won't have enough priests to serve every congregation in every building every week. So we will need to imagine worship in new ways. This pandemic is giving us a jump start. It also reminds us that Eucharist-centered has made us clergy-centered, or at least clergy-dependent. But lay people can lead Morning or Evening Prayer or Compline. And we can still be the Church. We may or may not need a new Prayerbook to do that; but we need a new vision.
7. A greater awareness of, and solidarity with, those for whom isolation is the norm. I was walking by an older woman the other day, working in her yard, and overheard a conversation she had with a neighbor who was walking by. She said, "well, this is not that different for me...pretty much my norm." She looked healthy, but probably late seventies or early eighties. She was not housebound, but what I heard her saying was that she doesn't get out much. As my own walk continued I prayed for those in Nursing Homes, and hospitals, and all for whom social distancing is normative for their lives: the lonely and forgotten. As a pastor I got a glimpse into that when I'd visit shut-ins. But most of us don't think that much about it until we get there. Maybe there is an opportunity for us to remember when we get back to going to and fro, that there are many who don't have that luxury. John Prine, who died of this disease recently, has an incredible song called Hello In There. He laments in that song how old trees grow stronger and old rivers grow wider, but old people just grow lonesome. Perhaps our experience with loneliness during this time will make us more willing, going forward, to say "hello in there, hello."
8. We need to flex and exercise our resiliency muscle. I used to Chair the Commission on Ministry, back in the early part of this century and my current role keeps me close to the ordination process. I have often said there is one trait I look for above all others in potential priests, and it is resiliency. Ordained ministry is not so much about how smart we are, or how skilled we are; it's about how we bounce back from disappointment or hurt. The more narcissistic and conflict-resistant the potential cleric is, the more concerned I get that they will never learn how to flex this muscle. This pandemic has forced us, however, to all try new things and to break out of long-established patterns. I heard one priest speaking of his own prehistoric brain and how it hurt for him to be on Facebook Live. But he was doing it. He was trying it. If we can learn from what we have learned, we may all be more resilient after this pandemic ends. I spend a lot of time with clergy but I think that this is a life-skill; one I hope my kids have. And yet unlike math or history, it's a lot harder to teach. Life is the teacher here. There is a prayer of thanksgiving in The Book of Common Prayer (page 836) that thanks God for disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on God alone. I think that kind of wisdom has something to do with resiliency, especially when our temptation is be ashamed ourselves, or to blame someone else.
9. Learning new skills is possible. This relates to the one above. but I think it's different. The opposite of resilient, I think, is to become bitter and brittle. When we go that way we are unable to learn new things; we long for the past when we are convinced that life was so much better. Nostalgia doesn't open us up, however, to doing new things. Flexing our resiliency muscle creates space within us to take some risks and to try new things. And even when we fail, to learn and grow. Failure may be a better teacher than success. I've been learning to bake sourdough bread. I mostly learn by reading and mostly I've got decades of successes in the kitchen; I can show you pictures of beautiful plates of food I've posted on Facebook to prove it, too! But sourdough is a real challenge. Recently I watched a Youtube video which pretty much showed me that even when I thought I'd had some success I'm mostly doing it wrong. But here's the thing: my work days are busier than ever but my workplace isn't an hour away. Sourdough bread takes patience and some time but it's not labor intensive. My mother just bought an I-Pad after learning how to Zoom across three generations. It turns out you can teach old dogs new tricks. They just need to be willing to try. Like learning to ride a bike, or playing the piano, or learning a foreign language. It's much more about a willingness to try (and fail) than to be super-talented. Most of us aren't super-talented.
10. Return to purpose. I think this is the payoff, really, and I've buried the lead. We do a lot of things in the church the way we do them because we have always done them. Why do we do that Church Fair or Apple Festival? Because Jesus started it on the last night of his earthly life, right? Maybe because we can no longer balance the budget without it. Maybe because we don't have the imagination to think about doing something new. Bake sales are notoriously ineffective ways to raise money, I've learned. The bakers go out and buy everything to donate and then show up and buy their friends' baked goods, who return the favor. I'm not saying there is not a purpose to doing this; the purpose may be fellowship. But if the purpose was to raise money there are much better ways for congregations to do that,. And again I know congregations; that's what I get paid to think about. But it's true in my own life and it's true in other kinds of work. We can get on autopilot. We can forget what we meant to do be about. The word purpose includes the root, pur, which is related to the word pyr, as in pyrotechnics. That is, purpose is about the fire in our bellies. Theologically, purpose is about the fire of the Holy Spirit and of Pentecost. Purpose returns us to our "why?" Why do we do what we do? Whom does it serve? Is it life-giving?
In closing, and on this last point in particular, I commend to you the wisdom I found in a recent article published in The Guardian, which can be found here. The writer spent two decades in prison. She shares here what that isolation taught her about life, and writes:
Solitude challenges you to look at things differently. Before prison, my worldview had been rather limited and selfish. I was known to throw terrible tantrums as I tried to bend reality to my will, but peace depended on my bending to reality. Life wasn’t all about me. I had to learn what was within my control and what wasn’t. I also discovered that time exists in relation to an emotion or experience, and it slowed or sped according to my ability to be present. So, I learned how to flow with it, not rushing nor procrastinating, but fully engaged in whatever was before me…What did that look like? It was as simple as just paying attention. I read books carefully. I listened to others deeply. I stopped mindlessly flipping through the channels of my mind. I gave my full attention to every activity, no matter how small it might be. Full engagement strengthened my gratitude, and gratitude strengthened my will.
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