What Do We Do Now?

A Good Discourse

So I'm doing a workshop "Called and Gifted," and one of the things they want us to do, is the opposite of what we tend to, what we have over the course of our lifetime, programed ourselves to respond.  I've mostly learned in the past three weeks, that I'm responding to life with a sense of anxiety I've never known before.   

Intellecually, I understand it.  For the past year, fight or flight has been answered one way, flight.  Learning to not view everything as a threat will take time, and as the pandemic is not over, it will also be only half true.   But the question keeps forming in my mind, so I'm writing about it to discover both how to respond and what I actually think.  I swear, my brain is in my fingertips and no where else.   

It's been three weeks since the conference, hard to believe. We took a break, and honestly, for me, everything stopped. Part of my stress at that point, was the return to school of two of my children. I hadn't realized how secure I felt with all the birds in one place, until two left. The world felt more fragile, because they weren't all here. The world felt less connected because part of my community wasn't fully present in my home. The pandemic hurt less for the past eleven months because all twelve of us were in one spot. That time is ending. They weren't more fragile or less for leaving, it was me. I began hunting for what I needed to feel less fragile. There were a lot of loose ends, things I needed to finish...my book, the conference...just lots of little details that all nagged. So... I went back to the page and there's a link for those interested in continuing the discussion of how to promote and maintain civil discussion online and in real life. It needs to happen outside of a conference, it needs to happen as an ongoing reality. As we reopen, we're going to have to relearn these social skills we've let slide over the months of pandemic. Our emotional muscles atrophied in this time away, and our emotional strength to bear the ordinary. I don't believe it's just me.

We're going to discover how a year of Lent changed how we see things, how we feel out there outside of our homes. "It's a dangerous business Frodo, going out your front door." --and until everyone is vaccinated and this disease is stamped out, it will be. There will always be risk, that we will hurt someone else inadvertendly by carelessness, or by omission and callousness.

Being careful with others, both physically and mentally, will be a sacrifice. It will be an act of love, of willing the good of the other, to wear masks and maintain social distance. We need need to remember that we ourselves, (all of us), at this point, are fragile. We don't often recognize that fragility, because we're used to pretending at all times, that we're not.

All the more reason for promoting "A Good Discourse," because we need to recognize first, last and always, that behind every screen is a soul, and our own souls are damaged in addition to others, when we give in to temper, wrath, snark, gossip, lies and indifference. We're all in this together, and we'll only weather this by creating deliberate fellowship and hold true. Think I'm going to hold a marathon LOTR now...

Here's the link: A Good Discourse