The last few months seem to have gone by in a blurry haze, with one day melding into the next. Like everyone else, no doubt, I have been going through all kinds of emotions and thoughts. Fear and frustration have not been far below the surface along with an ever present anxiety about what happens if I get the damn thing and whether maybe the person next to me on the train or in the supermarket could be a carrier. Then, there was the experience of most of my regular involvements coming to a sudden halt and after a while I did not even notice it. I am not sure now what is the more disconcerting, the loss of the involvement or the loss of the loss?
While I would like to think that Korea is over the worst of it, I suspect that the crisis is going to continue for a long time to come. All around the world things just seem to be out of kilter. On the one hand, stock markets seem to have gone into overdrive and US billionaires have increased their wealth by $434 billion since the pandemic began (I hope our financial managers have a few shares in Amazon!) and, on the other hand, the numbers of unemployed are skyrocketing and intrusive surveillance is becoming normalized. Of course, as governments divert to more urgent tasks, there is the usual silence about the hastening ecological collapse. And now Trump is “thinking” of testing nuclear weapons.
On the Church front things seem noticeably quiet. For much of the lockdown, the major clerical concern seemed to be with virtual Masses and when can we get the show back on the road. The former seems to me to have been a risky choice which runs the serious risk of turning believers into consumers of a show rather than participants in a sacramental event where a community gathers around an altar to share food and drink. Maybe the virtual Mass was the right choice in the circumstances but, then again, watching the other channel might be equally soporific. As to the latter issue of getting the show back on the road, perhaps we need to seriously ask, why and what for?
On the Church front things seem noticeably quiet. For much of the lockdown, the major clerical concern seemed to be with virtual Masses and when can we get the show back on the road. The former seems to me to have been a risky choice which runs the serious risk of turning believers into consumers of a show rather than participants in a sacramental event where a community gathers around an altar to share food and drink. Maybe the virtual Mass was the right choice in the circumstances but, then again, watching the other channel might be equally soporific. As to the latter issue of getting the show back on the road, perhaps we need to seriously ask, why and what for?
One thing, it seems to me, is that the path to the future world is going to be built on the ecological integrity of local communities. The future will involve how we listen to each other (prayer not surveillance), build healthy relationships not based on fear (a real presence), and how we feed ourselves with locally grown “daily bread”. Despite a rich tradition and lots of spirituality, it is hard to hear our Church, let alone our Society, talking about these things… but maybe I am watching the wrong channel.