A Beautiful Day

This was made to be the perfect spring day. It was so nice outside today.

You can step outside, maybe go for a walk at a safe distance from everyone.
You can try to forget for a brief period of time what is going on in the world.

 There must have been beautiful days during both world wars. There are beautiful days in the midst of great sorrow or pain.

 I remember once speaking with Jessie Begbie (best Sutherland Church elder ever) about beautiful days in the midst of sorrow. I had been learning at seminary about a hard to grasp attribute of God. The attribute, which was considered by theologians to be a positive virtue, was that of God’s indifference.
I had been struggling with how indifference could be seen as a positive attribute.
Mostly, I took it to mean that when we are freaking out, God is not freaking out - like a parent doesn’t scream in anguish every time their toddler screams in frustration.

Jessie taught me more than that. She told me about one of the things that was tough for her to grasp when her husband Bruce died suddenly. She said that her whole world had come apart, but when she looked up at Grouse Mountain it was exactly like it had been before, nothing had changed. This was, at first, offensive to her.

She said, “That’s the indifference of God. I was in the worst pain I ever felt and I knew that God was with me, but I also learned that God was constant.”

 It was a beautiful day today.

As I was riding back from the forest I rode past Lynn Valley Care Centre. Across Lynn Valley Road from the place where COVID has claimed 8 lives (and 36 patients positive and 18 staff positive) a group of kids (safely distanced from one another) were standing with handmade big paper hearts and signs and decorated banners. They were just standing and waving and yelling and smiling for the people in the Care Centre.

 It was a beautiful day today.

Number the Days

Is there a way of numbering the COVID days? Let’s say that this is day 4. We’ll start the numbering with Monday of this week, though that’s not quite accurate. It’s been longer than that already.

I am getting used to my “Mornings with Justin”. Each morning, our Prime Minister emerges from his house and gives an update. It’s not the “regular update”. That takes place at noon eastern time each day. These morning updates are pretty much just a leader trying to console and comfort a nation.
Justin seems to like the role. He is trying to embrace it. And we do need the comforting.

What has patterned your days? Are your hours ordered by the rolling updates? “Mornings with Justin” sometime around 7:30 or 8. Then Trump (don’t get me started) tells America how great Trump is and what a great job Trump is doing and how he knows so much about so many things including viruses (don’t get me started). Then the Ontario update, then sometime in the afternoon the BC update.

 None of us used to order our days this way. We are reaching for something better to give our hours their punctuation. I had a Zoom call with three friends last night and it felt so good, just to see their faces.

Pretty much every single person I have spoken with has cancelled something, a trip, a job, definitely some appointments. This is not the schedule that we thought we would be living.

So we fall into it. We reach towards a way of giving the hours an order by which we can live hopefully.

We are told, in Scripture, that God orders our days. When David prayers his now famous prayer about being known by God he says, “before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely.” He says that God knew him before he was even formed.

I might not know the order of my hours and days right now, but I trust, with all of my heart, that God does.

Read the Psalm. There’s so much in it.

Like this,

“Even if I think that the darkness will overwhelm me. It will not be dark to you. For darkness is as light to you.”

 I love you, Lord.

Amen.

Over all the Earth

I had a Guinness last night. St. Patrick’s Day.

And this morning our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau presented a major economic relief package.
He’s a wartime Prime Minister now.

Trudeau is in self-isolation as his wife Sophie tested positive last week for COVID-19. He makes announcements daily from outside his home at Rideau Cottage. This morning, after his prepared remarks which outlined 27 Billion in aid and 55 Billion in tax deferrals, he was about to take questions. Be then he said, “Hold on a minute” and turned around, headed back into his house and grabbed his coat.
So good.

We’re all settling in now wondering what this not normal time will be like, trying to set a new normal.

The aid mentioned, payments to people, financial support outlined by Trudeau lasts 12 to 14 weeks in most cases. that means that the government is setting a plan that we will be in this relative isolation for a few months.
Okay. Helps to know the terms.
The big 6 banks announced that they will defer mortgage payments. Okay.

Is this one of those wartime feelings? First you feel an overwhelming uncertainty and then something happens that at least makes you feel like your feet are on the ground. There’s a little traction at least, enough to set you in a place of considering how you might best help the effort.

It is so beautiful outside today.
We are still allowed to go outside. For those who like solitary walks, or bike rides it is a perfectly beautiful day weather wise.
Glorious.

One of the interesting things about this is that this is “over all the earth”. If this is a war, it is more the kind of alien invaders.
Over all the earth.

And on a beautiful day like today I have a question that’s a prayer. Most of the big questions are prayers, after all.

Dear God,

What does it mean that your glory is “over all the earth”.
What does it mean now, when we face this foe and have apparently mostly 17th Century tactics for the waging of the war. “Keep your distance” is the battle cry.

I sat by myself yesterday, safely distanced from others in Stanley Park and the sun was on my face and something in the world seemed perfect. But then a woman came up to me (too close for these days) and asked quite loudly, “Do you have a bike pump?” I didn’t have a bike pump, I use C02 canisters if I get a flat. I told her. I said sorry. What I had wouldn’t fit on her tire.
She didn’t have a flat. She just thought her tire was a bit spongy.

Didn’t she know that we are in the apocalypse?

The perfection of the moment, the glory of the sunlight was broken by this reminder of the time we are in.

Dear God,

I know that your glory is over all the earth.
Grant that I may see it, in the beauty of this day. In the life I get to live, and most importantly, in the people with whom I share this life.

Amen

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.

Waiting

Each day a reflection, here in the quiet of the morning.

The morning seems the same as every morning before it. The clocks have turned and it is light much earlier now. I look out this window and can’t see that anything at all is different. But almost everything is different. Just like that.

And people are reeling. It seems that everyone is shaky.
Here are some of the forms of the shakiness;

There is the counting. Counting can take on a few manifestations. Perhaps you are counting the cases or the deaths. Counting cases of an illness and deaths caused by that illness can make you shaky. This form of counting includes also the counting of distances. How close to me is the illness. I live a few blocks away from Lynn Valley Care Centre in one direction and Lions Gate Hospital in the other.

There is the counting of implication and impact. How will this affect me and my family? How do you count money and savings in a time like this? For many of us, we know that we live in relative affluence and that we won’t be the ones first hit by the financial implications of this crisis.

But we still count.

And we count the time.

How long?

How long will this be and how much will it take? Everything changes so quickly. Just about everything that we were used to filling up our days was gone. Just like that.

Just about everyone is shaky. We don’t know how much this will cost. We don’t know how much suffering will be occasioned. If ever, though, there was a moment of “we are all in this together”, this is it. We may have to social distance (that’s verb now), but we will find ways to come together.

When the ground seems unstable, when what used to be certain is uncertain now, well then, you can become shaky. But if you can, find your legs again.

The Psalm for today is Psalm 130:

“Out of the depths, I cry to you, O Lord.”
Can you imagine the cries from the depths around the world? People shut up in their homes, people trying to get home. Something is amiss is the 130th Psalm and something is amiss in the world right now. And then the Psalmist says, “If you kept a record of iniquity, who could stand?” In other words, if God wanted to punish people then things would not be good at all. However, as the Psalmist says, that is exactly what God is NOT like. Don’t put up with any of that hateful, ignorant talk about God punishing people with natural disasters or crises like this. That’s primitive God talk. It’s a kind of paganism, a fear of a tyrant god.

It’s not the time to rush to ignorance, blame and fear; as tempting as it can be.

We know so much more now then we used to know. I read an article this morning that was in National Geographic (March 14, 2020). It was about the bird masks that doctors used to wear during the time of the black plague. That is the kind of article that is coming up a lot now. Curious times.

You have seen these masks, they have long, curved beaks. Apparently the belief was that the plague was caused by foul air and that perfume and insence could ward it off. The beaks were long like that because a concoction of 55 herbs, (viper flesh powder, cinnamon, myrrh, honey, etc.) would line the inside of the mask so that they could neurtralize the plague air before it made its way to the doctor’s nose and lungs.

The plague bird doctors also sometimes carried sticks to poke away the victims of the plague.

Eventually they found out the truth of what was causing the black death. It was a bacteria, not foul air, though there were many reasons for the air to be foul.

I am glad that later this morning when I go to listen to the BC COVID update it is highly unlikely that Dr. Bonnie Henry will be wearing a bird mask. If she is, I might feel a little more shaky than I do right now.

Instead, I will listen and be grateful. Grateful for people like Dr. Henry and all of the other health care professionals, grateful for those working on a vaccine.
I’ll pray for those suffering. I will pray for those leading us at this time. I will pray for you.

The Psalmist ends the short 130th Psalm with a cry to those around him.
“O Israel, hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is steadfast love.”

Israel is his people, the community the nation. It’s like crying out, “O North Vancouver, O Kirkland, O Italy”, it’s a cry for the good of the world.

Just before that the Psalmist says what he will do, he gives us a kind of opposite to the shakiness.

It’s this;
My soul waits.

It’s waiting of soul and spirit. It’s not quite like waiting for a bus. It’s waiting without knowing when or how, but knowing entirely what.

And at the end of the Psalm the what is revealed – “plentiful redemption”

We wait for goodness. We wait for joy. We wait for healing and wholeness and gathering again.

PLENTIFUL REDEMPTION

Amen.