September 2020: Thoughts on Covid-19
Our wall of masks has grown, as Doug brings one home
from the hospital after work and hangs it up with the others. A daily reminder
of the days of mask-wearing.
The weekly pan of lemon bars makes its’ scheduled appearance.
I wonder if we will hate lemon bars once a safe and tested vaccine is available
to us? Once a safe country is available to us?
We eat the lemon bars when we watch Father Brown and Schitts
Creek at night.
A dozen (at least) yellow finches have been in our
backyard the last few mornings to join the other bird choruses. Their delicate
song sounds like fairy chimes.
We made one of those dreaded trips to the ER when Doug
tore his quadriceps. Surgery followed three days later. His recovery will be
long. He is a pleasant patient and I love caring for him. He has a medieval
torture device (a brace) on his left leg. It is not pleasant.
I’m preaching for our Tennessee church, Covenant
Presbyterian Church in Johnson City. Five weeks of sermons recorded in five
different locations. Preaching gives me spiritual exercise.
While Doug was in surgery, I sermonized into my cell phone
camera while ensconced in the hospital chapel.
People enter the chapel with pleas to God for the
lives of their loved ones. Hospital chapels have such a specific use; prayers
for life to conquer death. Covid-19 has made the pleadings in hospital chapels
almost impossible. Visitors and family members are often restricted from the
hospital, let alone God’s small house.
E-mails, phone calls, and even a few in-person (masked and socially
distanced) visits have filled the corners of my days.
The food bank is still the most worthwhile ministry I’ve
ever been part of.
Our daughter will be married this month. We will make
our way to Chicago and joyfully “marriage” (her word) Lauren to Sylvester Fejokwu. It’s
not the wedding they had planned, but it’s still all theirs. The celebration of
their nuptials will not be lessened just because the guests are fewer.
So many things have changed for those who marry and
those who bury in 2020.
Time has dragged during these months of Covid-19, at
least for us. The news that our President was aware in January of how deadly the
virus was, and yet took no action, is beyond the pale. The spread of Covid could
have been slowed, and lives saved. That’s the truth.
Hospital and mortuary workers have watched almost
200,000 dead bodies flood their spaces. They are exhausted and traumatized. Some
have succumbed to the disease and some have lost their own lives.
It all could have been lessened and this horrific pain
minimized.
The President, who strives to instill panic in the American
people every single day with false fears and shocking rhetoric, is pretending he
didn’t want to panic the American people with the news of a deadly pandemic.
His administration supported his self-serving cruelty. He, and they, can’t lie
and excuse this away.
Death has conquered too many lives. Prayers were
prayed by the bereaved, while their loved ones died alone in a hospital
room.
There is no excuse. Everyone making an excuse for the
most dangerous President in our history needs to finally stop. Just stop. There
are no more excuses to spout. The mouths of his willfully ignorant followers
must cease their protestations of what is true: The President chose to let the
people of this country spread a deadly disease just by breathing. He chose to
let us die.
His followers have been fooled by the greatest and most dangerous fool of all.
Besides the horror of death, jobs have been lost,
businesses have been shuttered, schools are now social experiments, families
don’t have enough food….
Systemic racism is no longer led by cowards hiding under
white sheets. The toxicity of White Supremacy is on full display and led by the
man living in the People’s House.
It’s September 2020. In less than two months we will
elect a President and specific congress women and men. My prayer is that sanity
will be restored by people of integrity and those who desire to be true servants
of this country.
Doug and I will watch the happenings of election night,
hopefully sans brace, while eating lemon bars.
As a good friend of mine said, "When life gives you lemons, make lemon bars..."
I hope it’s the last pan of lemon bars I bake for a
long, long time.
