Coming back to a COVID spike in Glynn County has been frustrating, annoying, and a whole bunch of other things, too! Dealing with this spike is different than the last two spikes we weathered. Not that we don’t know what to do; on the contrary, we have the playbook in hand from the last year, when we went virtual for the initial onset, and again in January when it spiked locally again. We learned from the first one, and the second one wasn’t as worse as a result. The community was well practiced in mitigation efforts. But this time is, as I say, different. 

It’s fascinating to consider how “we” react to this spike, which is several magnitudes worse than what we’ve seen so far. Either we have collectively forgotten how to manage our communal lives in order to protect those around us, or we are simply choosing another path. Yes, I’m painting with a wide brush; many individuals are still doing all that they can to be responsible citizens and blunt the effects of this ongoing pandemic. But pandemics are all about the wide brush. A pandemic is unlike most things we encounter as a community, state, or even a nation. 

Pandemics are reminders that we are really all in this together. So much of our lives can be successfully personal and based on what we want, need, or think, without dramatic ill effect on the people around us. At least acute dramatic effect. We know that personal behaviors drive long-term slow-motion changes that aren’t always healthy for our planet or our economies, but rarely are we faced with an issue that so quickly puts us all in jeopardy the way a spike of this virus can. Individuals acting alone can do little to slow a pandemic; it takes large numbers working together to affect change.

This is not to suggest that we should all live in fear of COVID and stop living our lives. We’ve learned how to live with the virus over the last eighteen months. And we have, I would have hoped, learned that the virus will always win if we don’t play defensively when it’s required. I have an example I used at Hospice of the Golden Isles, when I was helping our team think through the need for strategic changes. Sometimes we face things that are so big and so complex that we can’t stop them. It’s like living here with our huge tidal swings. If you set up your beach chairs below the high tide line, you’re going to get wet. You can play games with the sand, building up defensive walls and keep the water off your chairs for a while, but the tide will always win. It is relentless and powerful, and our flimsy sand levees will never hold. At some point you realize you have to pick up and move back a bit. 

This pandemic is relentless. It will dominate our community, especially with this new variant, if we don’t remember the best tools we have to combat it. We want to live with it, and find ways to have normalcy wherever we can; we got so much normalcy back a few months ago. Things have changed, though, and we find ourselves needing to pull back. Again. Vaccinations and masks are huge tools in our pursuit for normalcy. Unfortunately, as this virus mutates, we have to change with it. We can’t make assumptions only on what happened over the last year and a half. With it raging as it is now, and with our collective safety at risk from an overwhelmed hospital system, it’s time to behave differently until it settles down. 

Painting with my broad brush again, “we” (as a whole) aren’t behaving differently. Not differently enough to slow it down. We broke our previous local records a month ago and heard warnings about how bad this could get. Still, it gets worse, and we’re approaching double the levels we’ve previously had to manage. Some organizations and people march forward as though nothing is wrong, as though there is no risk, as though the hospital will magically continue to find space for all the very sick people that require care (and the staff to care for them). So what is going on? Why are so many so resistant to behaviors that can help their neighbors and their community?  

In truth, it’s an extremely complex dynamic. I can’t possibly reflect on all of it, but I do want to reflect on some of it, notably the parts that are most evident and most often articulated. For example, one of the chief challenges we’re facing is pandemic fatigue. We are all exhausted by the ups and downs of this period. We’re frustrated at the inconvenience of having to wear masks, distance, and/or avoid crowds. Frankly we’re angry about it to. For those whose lives are disrupted, we want to be in church or at concerts, or watch our children perform music or drama without all the hoopla the pandemic adds on top. Maybe we just want to go to a dinner party again without having to worry about any of this. We are simply angry and aren’t always sure how to express that anger. It does little good to get angry at a virus!

The reality is that our anger shows up in other ways. We’re angry enough that anyone, any institution, can stand in for the pandemic itself when we need to blow off steam. The inconvenience isn’t attributed to the virus itself, or to “the pandemic,” so instead it is assigned to the people and the places that remind us or force us to behave differently when all we want to do is act normally again. This is when we hear things about how no one can make us wear masks! We have a right not to mask! (Which is of course true, alongside the truth that a business can require one because it’s their right to do so as well!) Incidentally, others are angry at individuals who we don’t think are behaving the way we want them to. This is all the fault of the willfully unvaccinated or the anti-maskers. I can’t say that anger will get us too far, either.  We might be able to make our case, but we have to find another way accept what and who we cannot control.

I hear a lot about personal choice and personal freedom these days. I am a big supporter of both of those realities, so please don’t hear my reflection on them as hating our freedoms. We are indeed granted with a great deal of freedom and liberty, thank the Lord. On the theological side, our tradition rejoices that God gives us complete free will. We can make whatever choices we want, while also living with the consequences of those choices. We have the complete freedom to be complete jerks, notorious repeat sinners, blasphemers, and all the rest, and God isn’t going to stop us. For those of us who follow Jesus, we consider his teaching and example as a moral compass and code. Generally, we live as moral people who follow the call to love one another. We could murder, steal, malign, and more, but we don’t, because our faith has taught us what’s right, and our covenant relationship with God through our baptism demands that our actions line up with those commitments. In theory, at least.  

Sometimes it boils down to the ability to recognize that while we can do something (or not do something) doesn’t mean that we should (or should not). This is true theologically and also as citizens of one of the kingdoms of this world, too. I hear a lot of talk about liberty that boils down to the “freedom to do whatever I want,” when the sort of liberty we’ve pursued in this nation for so long was often a communal freedom from oppressive government, which is a little bit different. If we reread the opening of the Declaration of Independence, for example, we are reminded that the reason for the birth of our then new nation was based on communal ideas.  “We the people” is about “Union” (people coming together), “justice” (fairness in how we deal with people in society), “Tranquility” (peace and quiet, or at least lack of violence for everyone), “common defense” (we’re all going to have to pitch in to stay safe), “general welfare” (providing the tenets of things like health and safety for all citizens), and yes, “Liberty” (freedom under the law, assuming a just system of laws).  

My main point is that both our faith and our cultural roots assume our communal nature. Both our history as a people and the history of our faith impart the idea that we’re all in this together. The Christian faith may be a bit more explicit about our need to put others before ourselves, but it’s long been present in our public ethos as well. We have managed this in the past, when we’ve been at our best, and also when the world around us has been at its worst. We have come together and sacrificed mightily at other points in history to ensure the common good. And we’ll probably need to do it again, if for no other reason than this pandemic isn’t over and we may not have seen the last of the variants it has to offer.  

Partisanship is of course still the main obstacle we face in so many arenas. We’ve drawn lines around the pandemic that again, make little difference to a virus. I’ve said enough about such divisions in the past that it’s pretty clear there is no easy way to overcome it in the short term. What we’ve seen, however, is that the pandemic affects red and blue communities alike.  Our voter registration card won’t offer us any more protection than which state issued our driver’s license. Have no worry though, as the pandemic continues, and long after it’s over, there will be plenty of research and debate about illness and death rates in red vs. blue states.  It will give us something else to argue about for years to come.  

I know that it’s frustrating to be in a virtual phase again at Christ Church. Your staff is as unhappy about it as anyone. We don’t like it on a lot of levels, but we’re doing it because we have little else we can do to protect our community. I really don’t think Christ Church would ever be a super-spreader community. Nonetheless, drastic times call for faithful, drastic measures, and that’s where we find ourselves in these seemingly never-ending days of pandemic. When this pandemic started, we talked about the reasons we were making changes and pulling back; we were trying to protect those most at risk and protect our hospital system (and all of us, by association). As I said then, I say again: Christians are to love and care for our neighbor above all else. Often, we do that by coming together, but sometimes we do it by staying apart. We are loving as best we know how, even though it takes an unpleasant, aggravating, and yes, infuriating form.  

So, what can we do, especially if we’re frustrated, angry, annoyed, or disheartened by the pandemic and its effects on us? We can try to work with God through the Spirit to turn our emotions into understanding, hope, compassion, and even joy. We can endure this, and even thrive through it. There are places in the world right now where our inconveniences and worries about disruptions aren’t even comparable (Louisiana, Haiti, Afghanistan, Lake Tahoe, etc.).  We have much we can still do and much we can be grateful for. We would all also benefit from meditation on what it means for us to be an individual in community. Considering our role as a part of a larger system in a pandemic probably informs more than virus-response, if we are honest in our prayers and our listening. Anglicans have long understood that we’re in this together, hence our “common” prayer and our theology of praying, confessing, and praising God in community, not just as individuals doing our own thing.  

We may not know what to do with this spike, and yet we always know what to do. As we make choices of our own free will, as we survey all the choices that we can make, I hope we will always choose the things that spread and demonstrate our love for one another and bear the cost that comes with that love in grace and humility. I really don’t know what other choice we have.

Tom+

Most gracious and loving God, we ask your prayers for all those who are affected by this pandemic, whether the effect is inconvenience, fear, illness, loss, or indifference. Surround the sick and the grieving with your love and healing mercies. Strengthen and protect those who serve and work to care for others, provide for our needs, putting themselves at risk and under strain in the process. Bless those in leadership with faithful discernment and courage to do what is best for the persons they have sworn to serve. Grant us forgiveness for the times and ways we fall short of the hopes and expectations you have for your children. Inspire us to hope for brighter days and a promising future. Above all, stir in our hearts the love for neighbor that is both the root  and the fruit of our faith. We ask all these things in the name of your Son, our Savior, the great healer of souls, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever.  Amen.