HOW CAN IT BE AUGUST?

How can it be August?  We've been making peace with the sameness of days, and even weeks, but now months?  In our town K through 12 will be online again. The school buildings are shuttered.  September will be the same as May. I'm relieved really. 

I watched the news this morning. Maybe a mistake, I admit.  Forty-seven thousand (47,000) new cases in the US today.  China had 43.  Not 43,000.  Just 43.  And they don't have a vaccine either.  But they've brought down their numbers now, wearing masks and distancing. It's not rocket science, as they say.  No trickier than buckling a seat belt to save lives.  Takes no longer than putting on a pair of glasses. 

I think I'm feeling discouraged.  Do you have days like that? 

My family's favorite baseball team is the St. Louis Cardinals.  But we're seeing that dissolve before our very eyes.  Four more players tested positive.  Games postponed (aka cancelled).  Football no better. Our teenagers love their marching bands, but that's a no go.  We've been anticipating the diversion of sports.

Remember when Trump said he wanted to see the churches packed on Easter?  At our church we're hoping that's true by next Easter.  We don't expect it by Christmas.  My husband preached at a funeral this afternoon, for a man who spent years building friendships and doing good.  But only 25 of his friends could attend, and those carefully spaced.  The total dead from the coronavirus today in the United States is 160,375 people. We're doing worse than any country in the world.

It's been hard to remember that this isn't just a number.  It's real people, like the person we buried this week.  Someone for whom the prayer, like today, might have been:

It is better to rely on the Lord than to put any trust in flesh.

It is better to rely on the Lord than to put any trust in rulers.

. . .

We do not live to ourselves and we do not die to ourselves.

If we live, we live to the Lord,and if we die, we die to the Lord;

so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.

So then, life goes on.  Unless it doesn't.  There's no business-as-usual; rather a mix of confusion and hardship, anger and resentment, compassion and kindness; a hodge-podge, some of which helps and some of which can make everything worse.  Yes, not such a good day.

Mindfulness helps.  An antidote to the discouraging news of the day.  A practice.  Not offering salvation, not offering the hope of eternal life, which I find elsewhere,  But encouraging a kind of calm.  Something for which I am grateful.  Mindfulness, like many things, has a slogan:  taking time for what matters.  Time is so amorphous now, but when we think about it, what matters isn't at all.  It's still right here, ready for our attention:  the health of our own mind; the care in our heart for the suffering of others; our faith; the love of family and friends; our compassion for those who support our lives:  the grocers, cleaners, doctors, nurses, drivers, teachers . . . .  Maybe we are some of those people for others. Our love of nature:  for me the trees I live among, persimmon and tulip, cedar and loblolly; the boulders and moss, creek and meadow; the hawks, the deer, that possum ("Good Morning, Possum," 7/30/20). 

I have been given my daily bread, every day.  And today in the service I asked for my trespasses to be forgiven, and to forgive those who trespass against me.  I asked not to be led into temptation but to be delivered from evil.  I prayed, "hallowed be thy name."  You know the words.

And I received a benediction, which I pass on however your day has been:  Let us go in peace. 

                                                  

                                                                         Nina Naomi