We love in the face of death
If we can do that, we can do anything
During the early days of COVID, there were stories abounding about how we could hear the birds again, since traffic noise was down. How clean the streets were. How the water was clearer. I wrote “This Is What We Do” before the death tolls mounted, the unemployment grew, and racial inequalities made the news. So it may sound overly optimistic.
The basic premise, though, still holds true: We dance in the face of death, not in denial, but in affirmation of life. Even in our worst moments, we have been able to still sing, to laugh even through tears. Not uproariously, and not all the time, but humans are resilient even so. And we have been graphically reminded of how interconnected we all are. I hope this is a lesson we can take from this pandemic – we’re all in this together, and we need to break down the barriers of fear and injustice that keep us apart.
This long reading might best be done as a personal reflection reading, and not out loud in a service. If it is done in a service or meeting, you’d need at least two readers to break it up a bit.
The full reading is in a PDF document.