Despite all our continuing fears, anxieties, worries, discomforts, and inconveniences, there is good news and there are multiple reasons to offer gratitude.
Let us salute, applaud, and pray for frontline medical practitioners, doctors and nurses and clinicians, who are daily striving to plank the curve of a very nasty and voracious virus.
Let us salute, applaud, and pray for researchers striving to create and find a vaccine or two; and manufacturing operators who are busy retooling to replenish shortages of needful supplies like face masks, hand sanitizers, gloves, Hazmat suits, and ventilators.
Kudos to those who know their need to self-isolate, and to those who see that they still are fed and cared for. Kudos to those who, having returned home from travel, have not balked at the need for two weeks of quarantine and self-isolation.
Kudos to all who are taking social distancing seriously; and to those who, while doing that, are finding ways to offer help to others more isolated by running errands for them like getting groceries and medications.
Let us give gratitude for the wonders of modern technology that are enabling so many to stay in touch through various Internet avenues; for those who are quickly learning new online skills; for those who are helping create supportive community by sending out even a small missive like a virtual hug that sets off a chain reaction of other caring connections.
Let us give thanks for those who are being inventive: setting up help-yourself to our spare food and other supply shelves in front of their own homes; making reassurance calls to neighbours and friends; creating other neighbourhood sharing opportunities like the folks in the subdivision where Diamond and I live who are sharing dropped-off jigsaw puzzles.
If you do have Internet access, it doesn’t take long to fish around and find some humourous videos and photos and stories that, well, help keep us sane and not always fretful: like the Scotsman peddling his bicycle while spraying sanitizer in the air and blowing fire out of his bagpipes (thanks to Tom and Mayreen Obert). You might also find a cartoon of a priest tossing a communion wafer to a congregant kneeling on a kneeler behind a strip of tape six feet away from the altar area; a talking dog who offers encouragement to us two-leggeds from the four-legged ones; or a song parody to the tune of “Sounds of Silence” that ends each chorus with “We’re gonna fight the virus!”; etc., etc. Enjoy.
Yes, ’tis a strange paradox indeed, that many of us are finding, and even creating, deep and true community during a time of social distancing and self-isolation. Could that also be a sign of God’s Spirit at work in this riddled world?