I sit on the annoying side of this disease. Schools, businesses and public spaces closing down. I will not set foot in church for a few weeks. This is annoying. This has yet to become the problem it may become. I sit on the annoying side of this disease. Hoping this is the only side.
"T'was grace that taught my heart to fear"
I never understood that phrase until I realized that it's only because I see where I could be that I recognize, clearly, the gap between those two spaces. And the chasm of luck/grace/context/moment/je ne sais quois that covers that gap. My soul has been taught to fear the closing of that gap. That the difference between me, sitting on my laptop healthy and sound, and someone on a ventilator has very little to do with things within my control and very much to do with whatever it is that created the gap. I'll call it grace. It has taught me to fear.
"And grace my fears relieved"
Relief is a funny word. I sometimes use it when I am not late to a meeting due to the speed with which the train traveled one day. But it is closer to the boys hearing on the radio that their unexpected trip halfway around the world had ended and they will no longer need to patrol a jungle. Or the children hearing the trucks which bring rice. It is not the end of fear but the end of the lack of hope. Grace does not remove my fear. It takes my fear and says "The gap is small but there is hope even if it closes." It is the "maybe..." Or the ellipsis.
"The earth shall soon dissolve like snow"
This is not a lyric sung most of the time but it is good. The gap is small. Closing. Closing faster than we imagined. But it is also expected. The heat death of the universe isn't that far away. The glaciers will be gone. Life is a mist, an illusion, a small collection of CHON (Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen) arranged in a masterful way. From CHON have I come and to CHON I will return.
"But God who called me here below"
I do not claim to understand or have a monopoly on what happens after death. What I do believe, fundamentally, is that life (human life, especially) has reason. I believe in God not because I have hope in a divine spaceship that I will go to after death. I believe in God because when I look around me at what exists that is beautiful and hard (community, society, marriage, parenthood, communication, friendship, ad infinitum) I cannot help but see something larger. It is the mythical oneness of creation which I have chosen to see as directed and not accidental. The part of me that breaks when I see what is happening in Italy and what could happen in the US. The part of me that has broken as I unpack my family story and find slave owners and a woman who came and discarded her identity to become a servant in a home. The part of me I didn't have any part in. The grace that taught me and relieves me. Indeed.
"Will be forever mine"
I don't know how long my forever will be. My psychosomatic cold could be the onset of something bigger and I could be ash in an urn within the year finally knowing the answer to the deepest questions of my soul. I could outlive the airline industry. No matter the outcome, I know that
"Grace has brought me safe thus far. And grace will lead me home."
