June 8-9: Wile E. Coyote, Vaccines, Poem from "Kyrie"

I think there's going to be a lot written about this time of pandemic, of racial revolution.  Some of it will be good, lasting.  Most of it will probably be forgotten a couple generations from now, when the idea of the whole world just staying home seems impossible.

I don't know what kind of lessons will arise from this moment of Covid-19 and George Floyd, when everything seems on the brink of total collapse or total resurrection.  We seem to be precariously balanced between these two extremes, like Wile E. Coyote suspended in mid-air just before gravity takes over.

Yes, the virus afflicting humankind right now seems arbitrary, skipping over one person and choosing another.  And yet, the African American community has been effected more catastrophically, because of capitalism and a social class system that is designed to keep poor people poor and rich people rich.

Yesterday, I did the Bob Barker thing for my puppy.  Took her to the vet to get spayed.  She is home, resting, spaced out on the lingering effects of anesthesia and half a pain pill.  I just went to check on her.  She was nestled in my daughter's arms, paw on her chest, quietly staring up into my daughter's face.

My puppy will recover in a few days.  Be back to her normal self in a week or so.  This cocoon we've all been living in has provided me with moments like this one--reflecting on how precious each life is, from the smallest to the largest.  The stories of loss in the last few months have been plentiful--a harvest of grief.  100,000 dead and counting.  Couple that with George Floyd and the protests (a few violent, most peaceful)  that his murder has generated, and the festering wound of over 400 years of endemic racism that has been dragged out into the streets of the United States and displayed for all the world to see.

The story of this time is far from over.  The lessons are still being learned.  I truly believe that hatred and violence are never part of any solution.  Hatred and violence and willful ignorance are what got us to this point in history.  Eventually, there will be a vaccine for Covid-19.  A treatment.  And it will be love, as Martin Luther King, Jr., said, that is the treatment for institutional racism.

We've all been cocooning from racism for a very long while.  Over 400 years, to be exact.  The vaccine is available, and everyone needs to get it.  We all have this virus, whether we're symptomatic or asymptomatic.  The sooner we admit this, the sooner we can start to heal.

Healing is a miracle, sometimes painful and difficult, but always beautiful.

And Saint Marty gives thanks for that.

poem from Kyrie

by:  Ellen Bryant Voigt

The bride is in the parlor, dear confection.
Down on his knee at the edge of all that white,
her father puts a penny in her shoe.

Under the stiff organza and the sash,
the first cell of her first child slips
into the chamber with a little click.

The family next door was never struck
but we lost three--was that God's will?  And which
were chosen for its purpose, us or them?

The Gospel says there is no us and them.
Science says there is no moral lesson.
The photo album says, who are these people?

After the paw withdraws, the world
hums again, making its golden honey.