Who could have imagined when we went to virtual-only services two years ago that we would just be returning to in person now (with the exception of those two months at the end of last year). I imagine this is something that a lot of us are reflecting on this week as we mark the anniversary of the Covid shutdown in March of 2020. As I’ve said too many times, there has been a lot to hold in these many months.
It is all a little foggy, the sense of time through all this, I have to say. Pre-Covid vs (hopefully on the way to being) post-Covid. I look forward to seeing some of you back in church this coming Sunday. I also know that it will be a while for others. And what a blessing that we have a good virtual option. I think we all need to find our way through, and, hopefully, back in whatever form is right. But I also know that just as it has been impossible to predict how this would all come to pass these next chapters will also be unpredictable. I expect we’ll continue to learn things about ourselves and the people around us and the communities we are in. Just how will our lives be different and how will we find ourselves back to “normal”? To what extent will that feel like a choice we’re making and to what extent will it be something we seem to live our way into?
I’m still figuring out the lessons from this time. I hope that I’m a little more patient with myself and with others—at least on my better days. And I do hope to take from this a sense of time that isn’t quite so linear, perhaps more circular. And I hope to have a better sense of the things that are important and also the things that really aren’t. Indeed, time will tell.
With that in mind, I’d like to share one of my favorite William Stafford poems. May it be a gift as we mark yet another moment of change and turning.
The Gift by William Stafford
“Time wants to show you a different country. It’s the one
that your life conceals, the one waiting outside
when curtains are drawn, the one Grandmother hinted at
in her crochet design, the one almost found
over at the edge of the music, after the sermon.
It’s the way life is, and you have it, a few years given.
You get killed now and then, violated
in various ways. (And sometimes it’s turn about.)
You get tired of that. Long-suffering, you wait
and pray, and maybe good things come—maybe
the hurt slackens and you hardly feel it any more.
You have a breath without pain. It is called happiness.
It’s a balance, the taking and passing along,
the composting of where you’ve been and how people
and weather treated you. It’s a country where
you already are, bringing where you have been.
Time offers this gift in its millions of ways,
turning the world, moving the air, calling,
every morning, ‘Here, take it, it’s yours.'”
See you in church—and online.
Blessings,
Tom