Tag: coronavirus

The Sidewalk Dance of Social Distancing

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Going for a walk in our neighborhood, it is delightful to engage in social distancing with other walkers and joggers. People move onto the grass to give safe passage to the walkers they meet. The walkers wave in thanks. Joggers will go into the street’s bike path until the walkers have passed. For many, this virus has brought an increase is situational awareness and collaboration.

The skills of situational awareness and collaboration will serve us well when we again share the roads with many other drivers. Driving is the largest scale cooperative activity we engage in. From the air over a large city, we can see it for the beautiful collaboration that it is. We can also see the few people who make things unpredictable and unsafe. While they are the exceptions, when we are driving, we can stay preoccupied with them.

Collaborative driving involves knowing where you are in the flow of traffic and what your role is at any given time. It only works by following the rules and best practices, just like coronavirus safety. This is a sacred responsibility. Just as with social distancing, with driving, someone’s life is in your hands while your life in in theirs. Sometimes the thing to do is yield to another driver. Other times it is to speed up to make room for them merging. At all times, it is to be calm, aware and in the spirit of wishing everyone well.

Many of us are hoping we can come out of this crisis able to live the awareness of mutual vulnerability and mutual responsibility far better than we did before. Driving is one arena for doing that.

The sidewalk dance of social distancing is a thing of beauty and joy. Driving that way is even more so.

Churches Spreading Disease

For Christians, Holy Week is upon us. Are all the churches in your community holding services that are safe? The answer affects all of us.

According to a Religious News Service report of April 1, 12% of survey respondents in the U.S. say their church is still meeting in person. The governors of Florida and Texas have now classified religious gathers as essential services, making them exempt from the rule limiting gathering size.

The minister of a megachurch in Texas, a pastor in Florida and one in Louisiana have all been arrested for violating state orders against gatherings over a certain size. It was deliberate defiance.

Some Catholics are pressuring their Bishops to re-institute the in-person administration of the sacraments. They are claiming religious persecution from having them be suspended for public health reasons.

There are many justice issues involved in how the pandemic is being managed. Among them, is that some ministers are responding in ways that risk spreading COVID-19 while so many others are staying disciplined. And the ministers are doing this under the cover of religion. They are pressuring governors to classify worship as an essential service, like grocery stores. Some governors are doing so, putting at risk the good work so many people are doing to save lives and create the conditions for people to safely return to work.

One of the criteria for what makes a behavior pathological is that is causes harm. Drinking, shopping and exercise can all be done to an extreme where they cause harm. Then they are pathological, unhealthy. In the case of the pandemic, some religious people are recklessly risking doing harm. There can be various reasons and motives. Pastor Tony Spell claims that it is impossible for members of his congregation to get infected. He believes the virus is attracted to fear. His people are not afraid, so they are not at risk. This is really pathology expressed as religion. Some Christians may be distraught, fearful that without receiving the sacraments in person, their immortal soul is at risk. The element of religion does not make this anxiety less pathological. Some religious leaders may truly believe that the pandemic is a government hoax perpetrated to justify martial law. The cover of religion does not change that they pose a danger to their community. Some who are objecting just seem offended that religious gatherings are being officially classified and nonessential. Freedom of religion does not mean the freedom to do harm.

The vast majority of clergy in our country have worked long hours to make their services be both safe and meaningful with technologies like YouTube and Zoom. Roman Catholics are using the well-established practice of spiritual communion. While some insist it cannot be real worship if it is not done in the usual way, the proof is in the pudding. The vast majoring of clergy are proving meaningful worship safely, without physically gathering,

We are in a campaign to protect each other. We should not stand by and let people be hurt by the pathology or rigidity of a few who happen to be clergy or happen to be expressing it through religion. College students were called out for their spring break carelessness. We need to call out religious leaders as well. It is a justice issue. This is what love of neighbor looks like now.

Feeling Good While Falling Short

Human beings tend to take responsibility for things outside our control. It goes way back. Early humans assumed natural calamities where somehow their fault, that they had offended the gods and were being punished. We still have that inclination we must counteract with reason. Children blame themselves when their parents’ divorce.

The most common source of stress is where needs and resources don’t match up. Where our resources are not adequate to deal with what we are facing. Sometimes that stress is self-induced because our perception is off. Either things aren’t as bad as we think (which the anxious mind can do), or our resources and abilities are more adequate than we think (which the depressed mind can do).

Today, around the world, stress is based on the reality of the situation more than not. Hospitals are understaffed, undersupplied and underfunded. Professional can’t meet the needs with their usual standards. People are dying that wouldn’t be otherwise. Individuals can’t make their rent obligations. People need more food than they can afford. All kinds of resources are inadequate to meet the demand.

And so, we help each other out. Some would argue that the problem is a matter of distribution. There is enough food in the world. There is enough money. Those things are just not in the hands of the people who currently need them the most. It is a justice issue.

That said, individuals are burning out because their resources, including time and energy, are not adequate to meet their responsibilities and needs. Of course, people need to do the best they can with the resources within their control. Beyond that, we must psychologically limit our sense of moral responsibility to what we and others realistically can do and feel good about that. Let’s not be hard on others because what they can do is not enough. Hospital workers, first responders and decision makers must care for themselves by going to bed feeling good about what they were able to do, not focused on how they fell short. People going to the food bank for the first time should feel good about how well they manage what they have and not shame themselves that it isn’t enough. When you manage your money well and still can’t pay the rent, don’t lose pride. This is what love of self looks like.

On the other side, let’s not fault people for what is not within their control. And let’s stop others when they do so. This is what love of neighbor looks like.

Honoring the Courageous

The COVID-19 situation has called for acts of courage on the part of many people. I say called for because people who act from courage often feel compelled by their principles to act as they do. Experts on courage say that one of the several ways to become more courageous ourselves is by learning about people who have done courageous things.

It took a whistle blower to make COVID-19 public. For informing his colleagues about the emergence of the virus, Dr Li Wenliang was detained by the Chinese police on the charge of “seriously disrupting the social order.” A week later, he exhibited symptoms and described online what was happening so other medical professionals would learn from it. He died soon after.

Medical professionals all over the world are courageously risking their lives to care for those infected. While they are doing what they were trained and committed to do, they do not have the supplies needed to follow standard safety protocols to keep themselves safe. It takes courage, not just knowledge and skill, to do what they are doing for us.

Public servants are acting courageously to make decisions that disrupt the lives of all of us, cost people their jobs and harm businesses and the economy at large. Every day, they make costly decisions with no guarantee those decisions will even be effective.

People providing essential services to us, such as food delivery, are taking considerable risk as well. We can honor them for their courage and dedication and consider how to make things better for them. A long-haul trucker was interviewed on the news recently and begged us to not hoard food, since doing so makes her life harder.

Gratitude, yes. But the point here is also to strengthen courage within ourselves to be willing to make personal sacrifices and take personal risks on behalf of others.