I wake up, watch a livestream of a local Catholic Mass. Then I get dressed and drive to my wife's church, a United Methodist congregation. There, my wife sings and I play the piano in an empty sanctuary for a Zoom worship service. Later on today, I will watch a recording of a Sunday service led by one of my very best friends, who is a pastor of another United Methodist church downstate.
In my life, Saturday nights and Sunday mornings have been devoted to being around people, united in worship experiences. It's how I grew up. It's in my DNA. So, being isolated in my own little box during Zoom worship feels more than a little artificial. Yet, it still feeds that craving for community and faith that Sundays engender in me.
I will go grocery shopping later today. While I am at Meijer, I will be wearing a mask and avoiding other shoppers as much as possible. This evening, I will make a birthday dinner for my daughter's boyfriend. He turned 18 yesterday. I will take my dog for a walk or two. I will hear birds piping in the cold April air.
Whether in pandemic or not, the birds return to the Upper Peninsula in April, and the sun starts showing its bright eye earlier and earlier in the morning. These things are constant. Eternal. I try to stay in touch with these signs of God's grace every day, but on Sundays especially.
It is the Sabbath. A day set aside for rest. Reflection. Thanksgiving. I have never been a big fan of Sundays or Sabbaths. I can't explain why, but a deep melancholy fills me, morning to night. It may have something to do with the weekend ending, another five days of stress impending. These past five or six Sundays, I have struggled even more with this sense of melancholy. I have come to realize that being around other human beings on Sundays lifts my spirits, makes me feel not quite so alone.
It is a historic time right now in the world. A time that will be recorded in history books, studied by economists and medical doctors, written about by poets for years to come. Perhaps, in 50 or 75 or 100 years, someone will be reading these very words that I'm typing right now. I will become part of a Covid-19 pandemic archive, filed under "Blog Post, Sundays, Covid-18 Pandemic, April 19, 2020." Because it is important to remember the past. It's how we learn from out mistakes. Become better.
Greetings, academic of the future, from me, pandemic blogger and thinker of the past. This Sunday, I lift this message up to you. Take care. Learn from it. Say a prayer for the people of this time. Know that, on this Sunday, I am sitting at my kitchen table, thinking about the meaning of Sundays and birds and eternity.
Because that's all we have right now. Some idea of a distant future Sunday, where we can all gather together again, without fear, and sweep away all the crumbs of darkness and melancholy.
Saint Marty is ready with his broom.
poem from Kyrie
by: Ellen Bryant Voigt
Dear Mattie, Did you have the garden turned?
This morning early while I took my watch
I heard a wood sparrow--the song's the same
no matter what they call them over here--
remembered too when we were marching in,
the cottonwoods and sycamores and popples,
how fine they struck me coming from the ship
after so much empty flat gray sky,
on deck winds plowing up tremendous waves
and down below half the batallion ill.
Thirty-four we left behind in the sea
and more fell in the road, it's what took Pug.
But there's enough of us still and brave enough
to finish this quickly off and hurry home.
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