Co-creating a new way of being is an invitation to use the experience of this pandemic to shape the way we live in covenant and community and the way we move into the future.
Each week (maybe even twice a week), I am going to pose a question. Then, after a few days of my own contemplation about the question, I will post a short video here with a few of my thoughts.
I invite you to add your own reflections to the comment section below.
May 7: What has surprised you the most about the past eight weeks?
Thank you for this opportunity. What has surprised me the most about the last 8 weeks it would be my utter despondency about our current socio-economic and political system. As a chaplain in hospice, I have not been able to pause, in particular since the company I worked for was not stepping up and finding ways fast to protect their workers, who they expected to enter spaces where they could be at risk. I praise God that nobody I know has been sick thus far, but this is more luck than anything, and certainly has nothing to do with the company’s policies that have been focused on the business and not on safety first. Several of my colleagues have worked in facilities where many cases of Covid-19 have been detected. And these facilities did not share the information they had openly with their vendors, partners, the public. They also put their name and business ahead of safety putting lives at risk. At our company we face the choice of showing up for work and putting ourselves at risk, or quitting. No protection from the company—which makes plenty of money. I have tried to support the nurses and home health aides on my teams, and many of them want to quit, if they only could. Not that they don’t care about their patients, but they feel they can’t very well support their patients when they feel that their company doesn’t have their back. And it doesn’t.
And of course, this is the story of the land today. We have millions of people unemployed, a political system insufficiently willing to focus on people’s dignity. We have essential workers who are at risk all the time, CNAs, grocery store clerks, meat packers, farm workers, and others who are paid too little money for the “essential” work they do. In fact, the stark contrast with 2008 is remarkable, when we heard so much about the bankers who deserved all their money. But the “essential” workers don’t deserve it, we have decided as a country.
We see that African American communities are being hit particularly hard, not to mention the Native communities that are receiving body bags instead of necessary medical supplies. The utter neglect and disregard for people’s lives, dignity and wellbeing that is on display in this country right now is devastating to me.
But is this surprising? I don’t know. Not really perhaps. I never considered that we live in a true democracy. And at the time of the AIDS epidemic we also saw the attitude of “let them die,” a slogan that was chanted at a presidential campaign debate once. Armed white militias can storm the capitol in Michigan, but a Black man cannot jog in his own neighborhood. The stark display of neglect and disregard that we see right now is devastating. I don’t have another word for it. I knew this all before, but I want to raise it as a surprise, because if this disregard for 72.000 lives lost so far, and so many more to come is not going to change this country drastically, then nothing will.