Different

 

Everyone is Different, we're all Different. At least I certainly am. I know that, I see it. ἴδωσιν from Mark 9:1, ὁράω I see, perceive, discern, understand, realize that I'm Different. And I don't mean it as a compliment. My favorite is boredom, or being alone with one person I care about. If there's something to talk about, fine. If not, I'm content with Silence together. Life is Good, but the news is all bad except for what we make of it. Forty years ago, forty-one actually, when I began getting myself together and my life back on track by starting theological seminary, my Junior class (at seminary it's not freshman &c like in high school and college, at seminary it's junior, middler, senior) had a week of indoctrination before the middlers and seniors returned to campus. This is getting too long a paragraph, isn't it, I need to press return

and we did many things, some new to all of us, especially including beginning to acquire, for development over the next three years and on in life, new ways, a new way of thinking. Of seeing life, and the world, and humans, creation and history. For us in an ineffably German-orientated environment (I wished I'd taken more German language courses at Florida then), one may call it Heilsgeschichte, holy history, holy stories, a different orientation to life and its bases, origin, Being.

So even though I'm no holy man or yuródivyy, holy fool who takes on the guise of insanity, I do have a measure of the insane since that, my 45th birthday. In it ὁράω, I see Different from what I once did, maybe still ought to, beginning that seminary orientation week that started with chapel, Sunday evening September 14, 1980. I began to learn a type of theological reflection on life, in which I look for God's will in a Blessing being brought out of everything that happens, even everything that humans do, especially Bad, including to and with each other. Although my professors, remember I say I found the seminary somehow German-orientated, beginning with the Dean, who during the Third Reich era had been and apparently done what he wished never to recall, said they did not see how even God could bring good, a Blessing, out of the Holocaust. But other life events. Let me be mundane with a couple of earthy examples:

• Disaster in marriage: betrayal, abandonment and divorce that leads to a new marriage with a new partner, in which one has beloved new children who bless one's life beyond imagining, who, without the Bad News would never have existed. 
• Death of a loved one and its terrible grief, then changes in life that bring new blessings; not that compensate for the death, but that make life loving and livable again. Job, for example, the loss of all his children in a natural disaster could not be compensated, but the new family of even more beautiful children let him in the sense of ἴδωσιν, ὁράω, see that God had brought a blessing out of Job's tragedy.

So here I am, Different, seeing that in defiance of its horrors, we may bring a Blessing, blessings, out of covid19. We won't, but we could if we would. Someone, a friend, yesterday posted on Facebook a picture and quotation of a woman who was taking exactly this view. That the worst thing we can do to ourselves is to long for and force return to Old Normals. Covid19, the pandemic, lays on us, involuntarily and painfully, grievously but nevertheless, the opportunity to shed what of human life and tradition we need to shed. Instead of returning to Old Normal, we need to let Old go and look to the New. Covid19 has shown that things can change and be changed for the better, can make human life better, use of resources more sensible: 

everyone doesn't need to return to the office, there are people like me who prefer to work alone, remotely. Gasoline, petroleum, does not have to be wasted requiring everyone to commute o the office every day. A four day workweek can be realized as a New Norm. The nine month school year could be Different and better: when I visited Australia on business in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was told that, unlike our system, they have three months of school then a month vacation, three months of school then a month vacation, three months of school then a month vacation. During covid19 we've found out that school can be remote for those who need it to be so. There are opportunities for parents who want it, to spend less Time away and more Time at home. Many routine doctor appointments can be remote, ZOOM, instead of face to face. Staff and team meetings can work more efficiently on ZOOM. People in jobs of wearing, menial labor, find that they don't have to live miserable lives if the government pays them unemployment, forcing employers to raise their wages and lift people out of near poverty; only the greediest and most selfish "higher classes" could oppose this. People can vote remotely and by mail instead of in person, expanding the experience of democracy. Church, worship experience can be shorter on Sunday mornings, honoring people's Time instead of slavish adherence to liturgical tradition, and also those who need or prefer remote can watch live-streaming online.

We don't have to return to "Normal". We can make all things new. God grant us the wisdom. 

 

Enough. A beautiful and promising day awaits.

RSF&PTL

T+

Pics: from 7H Bayside window this morning.