Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Redemption and Resurrection during a Pandemic

Every year, around this time, I write a blog about redemption and resurrection.

This year, it seems particularly appropriate to ponder such things, because, in the midst of a pandemic, what better time could there be to contemplate the bigger questions of life, death, purpose, intention, and yes, redemption and resurrection?

Mostly, I hear talk of how everyone wants this to be over and to go back to “normal life.” But me, I think that’s like dating the same kind of guy over and over, because you haven’t learned your lesson the first twenty times.

I don’t want to go back to things as they were before this. I don’t want to treat time so cavalierly that I forget tomorrow isn’t promised. I don’t want to put off the people I want to get to know, or see, or say “I love you” to. I don’t want to forget that nothing matters and everything does. I don’t want to forget that life is fleeting, and beautiful, and excruciatingly fragile.

I want to cherish the moments I get to hug someone, as if they are the last I will ever have. And I don’t want to take for granted that worlds change in the blink of an eye.

For all the things I did mindlessly before, like grocery shopping, I want to keep the gratitude I now feel for every single person responsible for every bite I take in as nourishment, and for the mail that gets delivered, and the garbage that gets picked up.

I want to look at my life through the lens of the gift this virus has to offer. That’s right, you heard me. I prefer always to ask, “What is the gift in this?” Because that is how I find it.

Part of what I contemplate is this fourteen day window we seem to be perpetually living in - the purgatory of waiting to see whether or not we develop symptoms, or the fourteen day roller coaster that those with the virus seem to be on, not knowing if they will be spared or taken.

If I were to look fourteen days down the road and know I’d be gone, what would I be doing with this moment? What would I want to say? What would that bucket list look like?

Our lives are our legacy. Our stories should be told before they’re forgotten. We have this golden opportunity for redemption now. For amends. For gratitude. For love. For moments of laughter. And to grieve.

Yes, I want to take this time to grieve and process the loss of time wasted and a way of life that’s over, because, maybe one day we will be able to congregate together again, but we will never be able to do so in the blissful ignorance we embodied before this pandemic.

Now we know. And we can’t pretend that we don’t.

I am learning so many things now – that showing up doesn’t mean showing up perfectly. It just means showing up. I am learning that the best I can do is enough. It just is, and so am I, and so are you – enough.  

I know that my best intentions will sometimes fall short, and I will still be enough.

I’m learning that my need to have things look a certain way has crumbled beneath the weight of what the world needs of me at this moment.

As for resurrection, each one of us gets to decide the parts of our previous selves worth resurrecting and the parts that are best left behind.

I believe this is a holy opportunity to surrender the superficial, to celebrate what we once dismissed as mundane, to redeem that which is worth redemption within us, and to resurrect the promise of a world where love is demonstrated in our every utterance and action.

May whatever you celebrate and whatever you believe bring you peace and make the world better.

Blessings to you all,

Ilene