Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - October 28, 2020
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
For people in many parts of the North Western Hemisphere (other nations will have their equivalent in soccer, futbol) Saturday afternoon football is a colorful, exciting and cherished part of human association in autumn. It can serve as an outstanding example of how fighting the virus has eliminated vital occasions for human association, for enjoying each other’s company.
At our university when meeting traditional rivals, we may have between 14 and 16,000 in the stadium. A beautiful, blue sky, October day, surrounded by gorgeous leaves of fall! Fans, mostly alumni, of all ages, come to enjoy the game.
However, not all come to enjoy the game. There are some who come primarily to see old friends. They, in fact do not even see the game, so absorbed are they in reuniting with comrades from college days. Others simply come to walk through the woods and enjoy the splendor of fall. The football game in these cases becomes an occasion for other activities not immediately related to a passion for football but to human interaction.
While many of us try to live in hope amid the ravages of Covid–19 for others it is clear that all of us – and the poor, unemployed especially – are feeling the effects of an economic and social catastrophe in the range of a nine on the Richter scale.
Much that makes life meaningful has been set aside while we try to outfox the virus. In football a rich social event has been literally demolished by our precautions against Covid–19. Would we, if we had known in advance what our measures against the virus would do to interpersonal relationships, to our humanity, would we have done as we have done?
This is just one social event of many that has been shattered by our strictures. There are also wedding receptions, funerals, concerts and theater, gatherings for many a cultural event, celebratory dinners, meetings simply for the sake of enjoying each other’s company! Will we be able soon to look back with a critical eye on “what we have done” and wonder if this was the right path?
Esteemed and loved former President of our university, Michael Hemesath, has put it this way: “I have been somewhat perplexed by the degree to which people have let the coronavirus completely upend their lives. I understand there is risk from the virus, but there is also risk from getting out of bed every morning. Citizens and our political leaders may be making choices that keep us alive, but are we really living? Surely the goal of life is not just to keep breathing. We need meaning and we find that in each other. The current situation and the choices made individually and collectively certainly seems to be limiting those possibilities.”
Some of the other effects of trying to limit the virus have meant even more poignant and personally tragic effects. Should we not question our readiness to impose loneliness and isolation on many people and most sadly on the ailing and elderly? Would there be other measures to curb the virus if more broadly-based, more humanistic elements had been operative from the beginning?
Residents of a nursing home in Greeley, Colorado made the news recently: “Waving signs that read such things as ‘I’d rather die of COVID than loneliness’ and ‘We are prisoners in our home’ residents of one nursing facility (joined by the staff and administration!) staged their own protest along one of the busiest streets in Greeley. . . ‘Freedom, freedom, freedom,’ one lady chanted while waving a sign that read ‘we want our families back.’’ (Complete Colorado, Oct 8, 2020)
Do they perhaps represent the wave of the future? Or is there – masks, observing distancing and hygiene, certainly all this -- anything else we can do now – or differently?
Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”
