It has been a year since we shut down. A year since our church moved to virtual worship, ended Sunday school, moved all meetings to Zoom. It has been The Year of Covid.
So much of the world has changed. Masks have become the new ‘must-have’must-wear’ fashion accessory. (Just the other week a young woman came out of worship and commented on my mask! Can anything be better?) People post pictures on social media not of a meal in a restaurant (do you remember when we used to go out to eat?) but of sleeves rolled up after getting a vaccination. The most asked question these days is, “Have you gotten your shot?”
It has been a year! Many of us are open. Our congregation in Nova Scotia, where yesterday we one new case, has been able to have in person worship since September. It is different, with the numbers limited, everyone wearing masks, no congregational singing, no passing anything. It is different!
Life is different.
But there is hope! With the numbers of cases declining and the number of vaccinations increasing there light at the end of this tunnel.
But what is on the other side? That was the question raised by Paul Krugman in his column this week in the New York Times. He remembered how life has changed, both better and worse. He then asked how life might be “after.” Will we be going to work? Will we be going to the grocery store? What about bookstores? Will we go or just download a book to our e-reader? What is going to be the new normal?
It was a year ago that David Duke raised that question to us. In an email which I have quoted several times he asked:
Things might go back to the way they were "before" - only those few weeks ago - but only if we let them, and only if we decide that it's desirable that they do.…The behavior prompted by this virus screams one thing loud and clear to me: we don't have to go back to that, not if we don't want to.
My point, I guess is this: hopefully we can use this time of enforced inactivity to think about what we might want to do in the next few months. I am conscious that this is a moment of world-historical significance. It's one that will shape our future for decades at least. It's an opportunity for us to be able to shape that future in a way that was unthinkable only weeks ago. I wonder if we will seize it?
It is obvious that NOW is the time to begin asking the question about what’s next. We could have done it before, but let’s be honest, we have been so consumed just making sure our children are logged on to their virtual class, that we have our masks, that everything is sanitized and safe that we really haven’t had the time nor the energy to ask these important philosophical questions. The danger is that if we wait much longer, however, we will just float back into the comfortable eddy of the past which really wasn’t that comfortable.
When I meet with couples who are about to get married I tell them that they are about to join their lives “into one home.” They are going to bring all the stuff from their families of origin with them, only there isn’t room for everything! They have to choose! Then I ask, “What are the things you definitely want to bring? What are the things that you definitely want to leave behind?”
I think we need to ask that question of ourselves as we build our post pandemic lives.
What we have missed from the pre-Covid days that we definitely absolutely must regain?
What are the things we want to leave behind?
What have we learned that we want to keep?
Worship? Of course we want/need/must keep it. But as someone asked me recently, “When we come back can I bring my coffee with me?” How has this ‘time away’ changed our ideas of worship?
Meetings? Are there times when we need to sit across from each other? Are there times when Zoom is sufficient, and maybe even better? How do we decide? Who gets to decide?
Education—both for adults and children. We haven’t had Sunday school in over a year. What have we missed? What have we gained? We have had the largest group for a study in my 3 years recently on Zoom, including 2 individuals from the US! Is that something we need to continue? What has the impact been on our children? As our youth were deciding about how to gather one mother put it succinctly, “My kids are Zoomed out!” So how do we share our faith with our children safely?
Over the past year we have streamed our services. We have continued that even since coming back to in person worship, and most weeks we have more people joining us online than gather in our building. What does that say to us as we move forward?
Now is the time for us to begin asking these important questions. This is one of those moments in time when we can do things differently—if we are brave enough to ask the questions, to take the road we have tentatively traveled.