St. Patrick’s Day

They’re closing the bars on St. Patrick’s Day. These are truly unprecedented times. Jen said to me a couple of days ago, “I bet that one of the most used expressions in the world right now is, ‘They are saying that …’”. “They”, the government, the experts, the health officers, “they”.

We are living history now. This is how all those memoirs sound, lots of “theys”.

Have you had a moment yet of picturing the ending of all of this? Maybe it will be the closest things most of us have felt in our lives to the ending of a war. Will we stream out into the streets?

Here in Vancouver, I suppose the opposite of all of this was when Canada won the Gold Medal in Olympic Hockey in 2010. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon. People ran out in celebration. We went right into the heart of it. Everyone was so happy. We had to park blocks away and I was so excited that I left the keys in the car and the car unlocked. But it was a perfect day, no one would steal in such celebratory pandemonium.

This, is the opposite of that. No gathering. Nothing at all seems perfect. Everything seems tentative. People are worried about their jobs. Business owners are worried about viability. And we are being told to stay home.

“Don’t go out”, they say. “Don’t gather. It’ll be weeks, more likely months.”

“But we will get through”. That’s what “they” say at least.

I ride my bike a lot and being in this part of the world I can ride mostly the whole year through. Something happens before each season whereby months before the next season arrives there is invariably a day when it seems that the announcement is made that it is coming. So in the fall, there is a winter like day, the air, the trees. In the winter, even sometime in January there is something that announces the coming spring. It’s still months away and there will still be wind and rain and some snow perhaps, but the announcement made can be inspiring.

I pray for you. I pray that you will hear, by your spirit, in your thought or prayer or imagination, that this season too, will end. It’s usually in the smallest of things, that announcement, a birdsong, a moment where you forget what is happening right now.

Today, the 141st Psalm,

“My eyes are toward you, O Lord.”

This is said in the midst of uncertainty and stress. There is more to the prayer.

“In you I take refuge; do not pour out my soul.”

Another way of putting it is this, “In you I take refuge, do not give me over to death.”

That is uncertainty.

And we live and pray and work if we are able in the midst of uncertainty right now.

So I pray;

“My eyes are toward you, O Lord.”

Amen.