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
