Insights from the present

12/18/2020. Since February we have been coping with the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and COVID-1619, the first a novel coronavirus, the second....well, not at all novel. I have called racism America’s original sin, our default social organizing principle to classify and calcify people.

I have been sharing carols while ringing a bell, changing the phrases to be more inclusive. No to “Eskimo,” yes to “Inuit.” You wouldn’t be surprised that no one notices the lyric change....

There have been numerous sightings of texting while walking in the mall.  I’m surprised there have not been more head-on pedestrian predicaments. The cognitive neuroscientists ought to study the peripheral vision humans are acquiring while textwalking. (Is that even a word? Well, it is now!)

I have seen some interesting hoodies at the mall, here are some of the slogans:

Black Lives Matter

All Money Spends

I (heart) Haters

If You Can Read This, You Are Not Social Distancing

The identity lines are clearly drawn out here. Folks dress to pronounce their politics. No one says anything.

No one says anything.

In the midst of the hustle and bustle of shopping, there is a profound silence. Not “the sound of sheer silence” Elijah encountered at the mouth of the cave, but another kind.

An absence of depth. A focus on the temporal. 

Once in a while, once in a great while, while the shoppers pass me, I can dip a conversational ladle into the soup pot of getting and going and doing to listen to the cry of a soul now and then.

Enter Pam.

Pam walked by my giant red kettle as I shared my usual (sometimes too peppy) greeting. She felt badly that she did not have any cash and I said it was okay. But looking at the unmasked part of her face, I could see such a deep compassion, such a big heart in a tiny lithe frame... I said to her that I could see God in her, and that she loved God and people so much.  We stood together, captured in that profound moment as her eyes aglow looked back at me.

The next day Pam brought five dollars and her husband Cal. He said, “She told me what you said to her.” He smiled, having experienced Pam’s holy witness on the daily. Another silence with the three of us, like a Trinity, giving and receiving divine love like fountains emptying into each other.  

My soul was watered.