Rev. Joseph Boyd

There are many things I look forward to in my life. I look forward to going to a baseball game. I look forward to going to the opera. I look forward to being in a crowded bar where there are so many people; you can hardly have a conversation with the person next to you. I look forward to going to a restaurant and being told they are at capacity, and that I should have called earlier to make a reservation. I look forward to seeing people shop like they have all the time in the world, instead of like they are preparing for an apocalypse. On my last visit to the grocery store I only needed to pick up a few items, and I overheard conversations I had never heard before. I heard only snippets: “Now is not the time for that. You need to get out. No, don’t come here. It’s already getting bad.” I saw people of all ages including a cashier wearing medical gloves to put their items on the conveyor belt, and put it in their cart. Every person’s eyes were darting all around, and everyone seemed in a rush, like they were trying to escape. I wondered where they might escape to, and I couldn’t think of any place. Every state in America has been touched by this pandemic, and oddly this fact grounded me: there is no other place to go, no other place to be but here.

I find myself making lists of things I look forward to. I look forward to meeting in a church building with people of all ages and backgrounds, doing what people have done since the beginning of our species. I look forward to working out again – in a gym or on one of the work out stations in Wick Park and not have to worry about transmitting a virus with no vaccine. I look forward to getting a haircut again. I regret not getting one two weeks ago, and now wonder if I will start to look like a cave man in front of your eyes, now that my barber has closed his doors. It was never my ambition to learn how to cut my own hair. It was never my ambition to have a completely virtual church experience either, but it seems we are all becoming slightly different people during this time.

Now that the borders of our country are closed to most kinds of travel, I find myself feeling like traveling, wanting to stroll in Europe, see Guadalajara, Montreal. I look forward to doing that. I look forward to not having to ask what is essential and what is nonessential from the perspective of government. Is church essential or nonessential? Of course if you ask me if it is essential to have a community that continues to investigate what it really means to be human, if it is essential to have some people somewhere who believe we are more than consumers, more than our job titles, more than our temporary and limited identities, if you ask me if it is essential or nonessential to have someone somewhere who understands that breathing and life are worth paying attention to with humility and awe, if you ask me if it is essential or nonessential to choose what we find worthwhile, or to choose what we worship in times of difficulty and strife, well, I bet you know my answer.

I look forward to holding someone’s hand without fear. I look forward to taking something from the world home without having to disinfect it first. I look forward to the day when parents in nursing homes can see their grown children, giving them a hug, and grandparents can see their grandchildren. I know many parents are looking forward to the day when children are in school again. One parent shared on social media that she’s tried homeschooling her children for one hour and eleven minutes: now she’s convinced teachers “deserve to make a billion dollars a year, a billion dollars a month.” I look forward to the day when I can let someone borrow a pen without wondering if we are transmitting something terrible. I look forward to not watching the news as much. I look forward to seeing a spring when people are naturally cheered up. Do you think what I’m looking forward to is too ambitious? I don’t mention what I’m looking forward to, to further depress you, or make us more stir crazy in a time when these simple, everyday activities are not prudent and called for. I bring this list up for a simple reason: right now many of us are receiving our vision of life from the news which is a huge mistake. We are thinking day by day, week by week, one month out, two months out, 18 months out, and this is a mistake. It’s an understandable mistake, but it’s a mistake. The news can tell us what health experts are predicting, and we should listen to this, and yet health experts or the news are not offering us a vision for how to live our life, about what really matters in the end. They can only tell you about physical limitations, and if we allow these physical limitations to become mental and spiritual limitations, we are making a grave mistake. With the right kind of vision, a physical limitation can expand our mental, emotional, and spiritual capacity. A physical limitation can further sensitize us to the world around us and to others, if we practice cultivating such a vision.

I’ve been thinking of the compelling lines T.S. Eliot wrote during airstrikes in London during World War II:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;

We are in a period of temporarily ceasing exploration, if we allow ourselves this opportunity. We are placing artificial limitations on how we interact with the world for the greater purpose of allowing the most vulnerable to get the health care they deserve and need. But as the days go by, I can’t help but wonder if there may be another dimension to this artificial distancing and quarantine. Business as usual has been interrupted. For many this has been very stressful, especially for those who have lost their employment, and are uncertain about when they will receive assistance. All those who have lost employment are now also the vulnerable, which we must pay attention to with care.
But our vision can and must go further than this. As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in 1964 in his Nobel Lecture: We have allowed the mechanisms of business, industry, and entertainment, the external manifestations of our life to overwhelm and greatly outsize the internal. We have allowed our businesses, our economic systems, and our democracy to run amok for decades without a moral compass, or any kind of socially responsible vision. We have continued to pollute our earth even as we are becoming aware that we are destroying our home. It has taken a pandemic for people in Wuhan to hear the birds again, it has taken a pandemic to see great nations like China and Italy reduce their carbon footprint by 90%. We are seeing through calamity that quick and rapid change is indeed possible. My question is if we will always need a calamity to show us this. Perhaps…but I’d also like to think that this can be a hopeful time for us. I’d like to think this artificial time may show us what has really mattered along, and like TS Eliot wrote: we will “arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.” We will perhaps have the opportunity to look forward to all the things we all did so frantically, without much thought or attention, and realize how rare and beautiful they were. This time could be our chance for our spirits and our moral compass to catch up to the stressful, chaotic, and busy world we’ve created.

Perhaps we will learn there is something more important than material goods and stock options: human touch, human community, human kindness. What if we created a world based on these foundations? What would our world look like? I don’t know, but I’m looking forward to it.

I’ll close with a poem shared with me by a member.

Lockdown
A reflection by Brother Richard of the Capuchin Franciscans

Yes there is fear.
Yes there is isolation.
Yes there is panic buying.
Yes there is sickness. Yes there is even death.
But,
They say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise
You can hear the birds again.
They say that after just a few weeks of quiet
The sky is no longer thick with fumes
But blue and grey and clear.
They say that in the streets of Assisi
People are singing to each
other across the empty squares,
keeping their windows open
so that those who are alone
may hear the sounds of family around them.
They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland
Is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.
Today a young woman I know
is busy spreading fliers with her number
through the neighbourhood
So that the elders may have someone to call on.
Today Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples
are preparing to welcome
and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary
All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting
All over the world people are looking at their neighbours in a new way
All over the world people are waking up to a new reality
To how big we really are.
To how little control we really have.
To what really matters.
To Love.
So we pray and we remember that
Yes there is fear.
But there does not have to be hate.
Yes there is isolation.
But there does not have to be loneliness.
Yes there is panic buying.
But there does not have to be meanness.
Yes there is sickness.
But there does not have to be disease of the soul
Yes there is even death.
But there can always be a rebirth of love.
Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.
Today, breathe.
Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic
The birds are singing again
The sky is clearing,
Spring is coming,
And we are always encompassed by Love.
Open the windows of your soul
And though you may not be able to touch
across the empty square,
Sing