Sunday morning things

* I've been "attending" (virtually, of course) my mother's church (Well, right now, everyone is attending virtually: the minister preaches in an empty church and loads pre-recorded music and the like). In a way it's nice to have that link with where I used to live (this was the church I belonged to when I lived there, and the current minister - who was planning on retiring the end of this year but I don't know if that will happen just yet - was just starting out about the time I moved down here)

This week is Ascension (well, last week really was, but it was also Honor Graduates day, so Ascension came this week). In recent years at least some Disciples congregations have got more liturgical, and I like that; I find having those waypoints in the year helps, somehow: It's a cycle, you come back around to the same things, it reminds you that there were literally over a thousand years of Christians who came before you who did these same things.

But one thing today struck me - he played a short video, not quite what you would call an apologetic, explaining the Ascension and what it fundamentally means - and quoted the verse right after the Resurrection where Jesus told Mary Magdalene not to hold on to him because he had not yet ascended. And that struck me - perhaps one of the lessons in this is letting go. Learning to let go. That is something I am bad at. I would be like Simon Peter at the Transfiguration - "Let's build houses and STAY HERE FOREVER." I do not like change, especially when the change seems to suggest a worse future.

And that's something I'm having to sit with a lot through this - the idea that the future is going to be VERY different from what the past was, and on the bad days, I worry that it will be all bad - we will lose all commerce other than Wal-mart and Amazon, we won't be able to hug one another or be comfortable out in public, always scanning for someone coming within ten feet of us, and travel....well, if I travel on the train to see my mom I'd have to self quarantine, maybe in the garage, to make sure I'm not sick so I don't bring the virus to her.

But to survive, I have to not just tell myself that all those bad things are unlikely to happen, but also to let go of my expectation of having access to things like in-person quilt shops, or accept that maybe I will ultimately lose my job in the coming higher-ed apocalypse, and have to decide if I'm able to just retire early, and live a more frugal life and do volunteer work, or see if I can find a different job. (I am not going back on the tenure track treadmill, not in my 50s, not even if there were a job open for me elsewhere. Nor would I teach on an adjunct basis; it is too much work and too heartbreaking for that low level of job security and pay). That the future will be different but there will be at least some good things in it.

Though also now, one of my great regrets? My life was SO GOOD before, and I didn't see it, and I complained about petty things so much. I just should have been happy with what I had and if I could go back in time I would definitely tell 2010 me or whoever that I should enjoy the coming decade because there are big changes coming down the road that I won't like.

Maybe one of the curses people like me live under is we never see how good a thing was until it's over? I remember how I complained about all the 1998 fieldwork I "had" to do (it was added on at my dissertation-proposal defense) and now when I look back? That was one of the best summers of my life, I learned a lot, I got to hang out with a lot of people (I got a lot of different people to serve as field hands with me). 

It also strikes me that this is one thing Christianity and Buddhism share? The concept that we need to let go of things in the here and now, to not want earthly things, to not have too-set of expectations. And that is something that is hard for me - I make my plans and I hate having them disrupted, but I also hate not HAVING plans and just sitting quietly and waiting to be shown what to do. Maybe THAT'S the growth I'm going to gain from this hardship.

* I'm also listening to the (Anglican, I assume) worship on the BBC today and they used the phrase "Leave us not comfortless" in a prayer for today. And while I suppose that's one of the programmed statements that's always a part of prayers for this Sunday (Ascension is over but it's not Pentecost just yet), it is, as kids today say, Big Mood.

(A recording of the service is available, at least for a while here. It gave me a lot to think about)

* I find I cry a lot during these services, and yet....the tears are somehow *different.* They are not the desperate "Everything is terrible, we're all doomed, we're probably on the path to human extinction and all the governmental stupidity and spin is actually not that but a plot to keep us occupied with something else so we don't SEE how doomed we are" or a "I'm never got to be able to have just a nice casual face-to-face conversation with a person again, it will always be Zoom over a computer or over the phone, and both of those are so much worse,"

I can't quite classify what they are, but....there's some sadness there, but also some acceptance of the human condition, and some realization of....I don't know what. I can't explain it. They are tears, but not tears of despair, exactly.

* The woman - a professor and the spouse of a cleric - is talking about how we are still finding ways to do the things we have done - teaching, and helping others, and making things, and writing. And there's something in that. I think a lot of my frustration in this is that so many things have changed, and teaching online felt very different from teaching in person, and sitting at the desk I just bought after lockdown started doing continuing-ed reading feels very different from sitting in my office on campus (we are still being asked to stay away until the end of June) and yet....I still taught, and I am still reading.

(She also notes that the cried through the whole service her husband conducted, where she was standing in for the whole congregation, and so maybe my tears are not that odd?)

* I also will say I hope "Where two or more are gathered in His name" also counts "virtually" (as when I watch the broadcast of Jim's sermons as he does them) because....I'm here all alone. And that's hard. Being alone has been hard.

* Interestingly - Bishop Wilcox (that's the person conducting the worship on BBC) talked about how in some locations, people who were not regular church attendees have been "tuning in" online - he recounted the experience of a minister who had been doing nightly "bedtime stories" online for children had a child he did not know wave at him in the street, and when he looked puzzled, the child's mother commented that "Oh, she loves the stories! She watches them every night" and now I wonder....one thing we have talked about for YEARS in the Mainline churches is declining attendance and involvement, and what can we do to increase that. It would be ironic in the extreme if one result of the pandemic was people re-engaging with faith (whatever faith, though my perspective is as someone who is a Christian) because they have needed to slow down, and they have sought things to give their life meaning, and they are also looking for something that feels like human contact.

Maybe one good thing - I pray - that comes out of this is that some folks decide they want that connection to continue after the pandemic is over, and people start engaging with faith groups again? Or at least, people look for ways to be a *community* again? That would give me hope, even as I despair over news reports of people having emotional meltdowns over being asked to wear a mask when they go into a store, or saying that people who don't insist on re-opening the churches immediately are cowards and "bad Christians." Maybe most people are the people quietly sheltering at home, and who either are tuning into online church so they can have church, or tuning into it for the first time - either ever, or in a long time? I hope other people are helped by it in the way I am.

Or: maybe a lot of churches keep an online presence for people who cannot/do not want the in-person services. I know my mother's church was livestreaming services for a while before the pandemic hit, because they had a lot of "homebound" members that they wanted to include. But if Bishop Wilcox is right, a side effect of this might be more people coming to that kind of connection - he used the image of the Bible verse of "casting your net on the other side of the boat" and perhaps there is something to that. I mean, I would hope that people who COULD would be involved in person when it's safe to go out again

* I've also been re-watching (on Amazon Prime) "Murder, She Wrote." They have the early seasons - I think at least the first seven - up for free (but they do insert ads, which is maybe a new thing? And is kind of jarring, but okay, go on, I guess). It's comfort tv for me and is nice to be able to watch at the end of the day before bed. I know it's ironic that I find murder mysteries comforting, but in a more cosmic sense, they are - the murderer is found out at the end and presumably punished (usually you only see them being arrested; I guess in a few cases the murder winds up killing themselves, either intentionally or accidentally), some sense of order is restored - the "blight" is removed from the community. And yes, I know it's unrealistic in the extreme that a place as small as Cabot Cove would have so many murders (my favorite episodes are the ones set there) but there IS something pleasing to me of the idea that "wrong is found out, and the wrongdoer is removed from the community, so it can go back to being what it was before" and I know that's not QUITE right because in the real world, murder cuts a deep scar in families and also in small close-knit communities, and one way murder mysteries are unrealistic is that real life doesn't return to "normal" after the murder is solved as neatly as it does in Cabot Cove or St. Mary's Mead or London or Manhattan or wherever.