Skip to main content

The Feeling of (Many of Us) All In It Together

 

We are hopeful that the end of the pandemic and a return to some of the things we've missed is on the horizon, even if it's a few months away. But we may feel confused at our own feelings of not being happy, or being anxious at the thought of things getting "back to normal." 

And then there's the feeling of camaraderie, of sharing an experience with many people. 

Going through something difficult together - even if we are in separate houses while doing so - is often a bonding experience. For those of us who have chosen to take the pandemic seriously, even if our individual circumstances have been different, we have still had similar challenges. It has been reassuring, as a parent, to hear that other families have had some of the same frustrations, like when blogger/author Jen Hatmaker shared on Instagram, "I just cannot look at the grades. I can't do it. I can't look at the missing assignments or those that scored under 70%..."

Solidarity, Sister-Parent! 

My beloved grandmother, whom we called "Mama Lanie," used to pat my hand when we were doing something ordinary but fun, and say"We're making memories." Well, this year, we've been doing many things, and many of them decidedly NOT FUN, but we have, in point of fact, been making memories. And many of these are shared memories. Years from now, like veterans getting together for a reunion, we will talk about 2020 and 2021 or the Great Pandemic, or whatever the future will name this period. We will swap stories of searching for toilet paper or creating homemade proms and graduations, and there will be threads going through all these stories that link us all. Unlike the veterans, this happened to all of us, all around the world, except you Australia, with your highfalutin mature and responsible government. 

The movie The Breakfast Club is about 5 high school students, seemingly very different, who spend a Saturday in detention together and learn things about themselves and each other, and bond. But at the end of the day, one of the kids asks, "What is going to happen to us on Monday? I mean, I consider you guys my friends. I'm not wrong, am I?" 

What's going to happen on Monday? This year, we've faced harrowing decisions. There is a deep and soul grief that over 2 million of us have died from this, half a million+ in the United States. Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color, and those with the least financial means have been affected disproportionately, but it has affected all peoples. We haven't all been in the same boat, but we've all been in the same ocean, even rich celebrities. 

And there has been some sense of a shared purpose. Of helping each other out. Of getting a vaccine, and getting those shots in arms.  

We've lifted up those who have been on the frontlines, our heroes, teachers, grocery store clerks, nurses, and spoken of how they needed to be better compensated, treated with more respect...

What's going to happen on Monday? 

We are looking ahead, now, to things getting back to normal after this long, long year of detention, but we wonder: are we going to forget the feelings of having a shared experience? There has been an odd sense of togetherness, ironic considering we were so apart. We laugh at hearing how Prince Philip closes his laptop when he's done with a Zoom call or watch a video of Dolly Parton getting her vaccine.

As you walk on by 
Will you call my name? 
Or will you walk away?

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Me and My Collar

You may run into me on a Friday, in my neighborhood, so it's time I let you know what you might see. When I was doing my required unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), my supervisor suggested that any of us who came from traditions where a clerical collar was an option, take one "collar week," to see how we were treated, as opposed to wearing regular professional clothes. After a couple of days, I joked to the Catholic priest, "How do you manage the power?" In regular clothes, I would walk into a patient's room, and it would take about 5 or so minutes of introductions and pleasantries before we could really get down to talking about their feelings, their fears, the deep stuff. With most people, as soon as that clerical collar walked in the room, with me attached, they began pouring out all the heavy stuff they were carrying. I was riding the bus back and forth every day, and though not quite so dramatic, the collar effect was alive there, to

Beloved Community: The Now and Not Yet

Rev. Christine Robinson has a great little post up about the phrase "beloved community" and why it's problematic to use that to describe a church. Like her mom, I can get cranky about the whole thing, but my crankiness lies in the misuse of what is, to me, such a breathtaking and profound concept. Martin Luther King, Jr., someone whose words I study in great detail, is the one we often think of as originating the term, but he learned about it through the writings of Josiah Royce. Josiah Royce (right) with close friend William James.  Royce was a philosopher, studying Kant, Hegel. I imagine he would have enjoyed Koestler's theory of the holon , because he saw humanity as being both individuals and part of a greater "organism" that was community. As King's belief about Beloved Community would be rooted in agape , Royce's philosophy stemmed from what he called loyalty, and by that he meant, "the practically devoted love of an individual f

The Most Controversial Thing I'll Write All Year

Back when you were a kid, you learned a lesson. It was wrong. And it's time for you to unlearn it. You learned that you were responsible for other people's feelings. Not that you should care about other people's feelings. (You should.) Not just that you should be sensitive to other people's feelings. (You should.) But you were taught that you were actually responsible for other people's feelings. It happens in almost all homes, even the loving ones. In abusive homes, it's more blatant. If Dad is unhappy, you get hit. So you learn that it is actually your responsibility to keep him happy, or there would be consequences. But even in non-abusive homes, it happened. If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.  You are not responsible for other people's feelings. That's their job. And in fact, you are crossing their boundary if you try to control their feelings. They get to decide how they feel about something, not you. They may decide that you