The second week, it was all a bit more routine. I had developed a schedule. I was recording lectures and posting discussions and ordering groceries online. Two weeks, they had said. I knew it was going to be more than two weeks, but this was ok. Sort of. I could do this. Sort of. The steely resolve was still there, but the high was drifting away. Yup. School online. We can do it. It's ok. Uh-huh, church online. It'll do. For now. Don't love it, but it's ok. For the sake of the curve. "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door" (p. 74). It was feeling heavier, and I was content enough to stay home.
Around that time, I -- we all -- began to see who really mattered to the running of the world. The university students who delivered my groceries were heroes. Weren't we just seeing who the real heroes were? Not the actors and the sports stars who sat in their mansions with their pools and golf courses and whinged about confinement, but the ordinary people behind plexiglass at the grocery stores, the Instacart shoppers, the farmers, the truck drivers, the people working in hospitals, fire departments, police departments, and ambulances. "Such is oft the course of the deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands move them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere" (p. 269).
By the third week, it became drudgery. Frankly, I'm sick of my computer. I'm sick of Zoom and Team. I'm sick of communicating via email and text and screens. I'm sick of having my work life and my home life bleed together into a messy puddle. I'm sick of the fact that working and talking to my mom and buying groceries and relaxing in front of the TV and going to church all feel like exactly the same thing. It's all a screen. I'm fed up with life mediated by screens. But ok. I'm complaining just like the movie actors. One foot in front of the other, figuratively speaking, of course, because there's really nowhere to go. "'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo. 'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us'" (p. 51). It was drudgery, but I committed to asking God to redeem the time I have been given and I carried on.
I have continued to pray thus. But now we're into week six. I'm well past the high, well past the resolve, well past the drudgery. It's beginning to feel like it's never going to end. "'You and I, Sam, are still stuck in the worst places of the story, and it is all too likely that some will say at this point: "Shut the book now, dad, we don't want to read anymore"'" (p. 713). I'm ready to shut the book. I'm ready to stop reading. I am so tired of all of this. I just want it to be done. I am weary of feeling like a pariah. I am weary of feeling suspicious about every person around me and having them feel suspicious of me. We are all walking around like lepers, crying, "Unclean! Unclean!" Like lepers, we are isolated, alone, untouchable. And oh, I am longing for it to be done.
I understand the necessity. I get the dangers of ending this isolation too quickly. I'm not oblivious to the risks. I'm not about to start protesting, to start questioning if maybe this is all a grand conspiracy designed to turn the world into a totalitarian regime under the rule of the WHO. I don't believe that. I've seen the stories of how this virus is raging through nursing homes. I've read the stories of those who have had to stand outside hospitals whilst loved ones die alone inside them. I believe the danger is real, and I can show grace for a government that is trying, just as I am, to fathom the unfathomable and find a path through the uncharted. My cry is a cry of the heart, not a cry of the intellect. The two are different. "It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. It is wisdom to recognise necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope" (p. 269). I'm not imagining that the virus is not that bad, or that we have this thing beat, or that we can simply fling open the gates to "normal" life and things can just go back to the way they were before. They may never go back to the way they were before. Maybe they ought not to. But oh, the cry of my heart is to hug and be hugged. No wonder the lepers were so astonished when Jesus broke protocol and touched them. I am beginning to understand the depth of their loneliness.
And the reality is, I have it good. I have a home. I have a backyard (never looking better). I have a job with a paycheque. I have the technology to live live mediated by a screen. I have a dog and a housemate."There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach" (p. 922). There is still good and godly and light in this dark world. The shadow will pass.
Most importantly, I have Jesus. Having Jesus does not make the longings less real. I still want this to be done. I want to see a person face-to-face and not have to stay six feet away. I want a hug. I want to visit my mom. I'd love to sit down over sushi. I'd like to do my own grocery shopping. I'd like to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with my brothers and sisters in Christ and sing together and hear the sound of our voices lifting the roof together (because won't we!) But knowing Jesus, filling my mind with his Word, does bring fresh resolve. I can hold on. I can do this for him. "[The Elven bread] did not satisfy desire, and at times, Sam's mind was filled with the memories of food, and the longing for simple bread and meats. And yet this waybread of the Elves had a potency that increased as travellers relied on it alone and did not mingle it with other foods. It fed the will, and it gave strength to endure, and to master sinew and limb beyond the measure of mortal kind" (p. 936). His Word is my Elven bread and it gives the strength to endure.
I will come through this. We all will. Like Frodo, we may come through it a little mangled. We will carry the scars. They will be the testimony that we endured. We survived the Pandemic of 2020. And "in all that ruin of the world for the moment, [we will] feel only joy, great joy."
The burden [will be] gone.... The Quest [will be] achieved, and all will be over (p. 947).
I'm looking forward to the end of the story.
******
No comments:
Post a Comment