I am examining what I wrote 2 years ago about moving forward in a time of plague. Here is the second post of a 2 series arc from March 2020, on living with Covid, Life In A Time Of Fear, Connective Actions. I addressed the ways in which fear can be both healthy and insidious. I wrote about the internal and external connective actions that will sustain us. I talked about the importance of the *reach* itself, whether it be a reach in with time spent within or in nature or a reach out by checking in with loved ones or engaging with an issue.
When I first proposed that connective actions both internal and external could be healing in this time, I believe I was right. They can. And as with all things, intent and choice are key to how things unfold. “The Reach” isn’t always a good or generative thing.
I have friends and colleagues for whom this time has meant facing -or not- their reaching for that which is destructive. Some have entered recovery, and some have had relapse after relapse. Some broke from reality completely, and have re-created abundant but different lives and some have retreated more fully into isolation.
I suppose that what this really means is that grasp and reach are a hairsbreadth in difference, but a chasm in result. Certainly, I grasped onto elements of routine I could manage: grocery shopping, household tasks, the search for open coffee shops. At some level I was aware that I was grasping, and remember feeling a little as if I were eternally drowning. I felt this grasping begin to permeate policy and rhetoric, as they moved from being data driven to being propelled by our grasping for an old life, rather than reaching for a new one.
I’d known the right thing to do -be gentle with myself, and find ways to slow down. To learn to reach within, without, and to bind myself to generative and life-giving choices without letting the fear overwhelm me.
But as I laid out last week, I didn’t take my own advice at all. It didn’t even occur to me, I was so blown away. I utterly broke down, and began to live minute to minute, task to task. Just the things in front of me.
I am so grateful for my church community. We are a small group, so I could manage to do things like make home-delivery packets of church supplies for everyone and it wasn’t overwhelming. The momentum of a weekly service, every Tuesday night on Zoom, carried me from week to week, month to month, and now year to year. We adapted quickly, although it’s a difficult format for many.
Even though we were apart from each other and isolated, only little boxes with our faces like Hollywood Squares, it was a shared experience. We quickly developed Zoom Church liturgy, an odd combination of what we’d been doing and some things we’d abandoned years prior. And as I said last week, we have met in person throughout the pandemic when it’s been possible and safe.
We are without a host site right now, so we couldn’t be in person regardless, and the search for a new church home has energized me in unexpected ways. We are few people, so even a small church space would be safe for indoor meeting. And we could slowly grow, as I’ve been feeling we may soon, into that space as it is safer for more to gather. It feels serendipitous that we are required to be a small group in a small space right now, and that we feel ready to grow just as the world turns towards opening back up.
For now, we’re gathering virtually for Night Church each week, and its steady rhythm is an important part of my routine and what holds me together. But also, I am starting to take my own advice, and I’m taking this added awareness of the danger of grasping with me.
I’ve always been suspicious of the urgent. True emergencies happen. Crises must be triaged. Of course this is true. But I was formally trained as an urban planner decades ago, and assert that much of what we perceive as immediate or sudden is neither.
All of this brings to mind something I discuss often in this blog, that the most effective measures we can take right now to combat the ravages of climate change are to educate girls and plant trees. Long term interventions, at best -generational, in truth. We so desperately want the large and dramatic solutions to our huge and life-changing issues. And yes, we will need radical and fundamental changes to build the world we need.
But even those changes are built upon the strength of networks, solidarity, and shared experience. None of that is instant, or created by indignation. It cannot be faked or applied, overlaid or mandated. And it isn’t especially flashy.
A key to building what we need, in both pandemic and climate crisis management, is the parallel internal and external work, what I had previously called the reach within and the reach without. Throughout this pandemic, the impacts of individual choice and action cannot have been made more clear. As in caring for Creation, each small action matters. And in both cases, Covid and climate, we see how the systemic failure of our institutions hobble the health and well-being of people. Many are seeing how close to breaking these systems are.
We must know ourselves more deeply than we do, that we might be less swayed away from our cores when challenged. We must know what truly motivates us, not just what we’re willing to do. And we must discover what motivates others -it probably isn’t what we thought. We must engage more critically and full-heartedly with our common and civic lives, even if only in increased communication with family or neighbors.
This grounding in our own rhythms, inner voice, and personal motivations and this building up of our relationships, engagements, and community connections are both protection against panic and irrational fear and preparation to navigate the currents of the future.
As we as individuals live more fully into this expansion, this fullness, we can demand that our systems of care -health, education, civil service, fire & police- do the same. It is happening in small ways all over, sometimes born out of crisis and protest, and sometimes from a more holistic understanding of service and care. Shored up by our turn towards mutual aid and community support, we can gather the momentum we need to make radical -that is, fundamental- change.
Slowly, so that its spread is imprinted.
Deeply, like the tree roots we so need to plant and nurture.
We are many, and we have long believed we are an isolated few.
We all have our own work to do. No one is meant to do this alone.
Join us.