“We have been using the word “corona” to define a virus. Etymologically, its ancient root as a noun came from the mid-1600s when the Latin “corona” meant “crown.” The virus we now know as coronavirus was so named three centuries later in the mid-1960s for the spikes protruding from the cell’s membranes like the tines of a crown or like the round corona of the sun.”
“As we fast on religious assemblies, we are thinking for ourselves. We are living in the air between trapezes. It can be terrifying, but it can also be exhilarating. We can stop seeking the answer to the thriller of our lives and instead, live in the questions a quiet horizon offers. It is humbling to be without certainty, however when the ego experiences a loss, the soul always receives a gain.”
“…depending on how a monk feels on any particular day or hour or moment, one was either protected by the cloister gate or imprisoned by it. One was either shut down by the vows or enlivened by them.”
What if we could all do this on Easter Day? What if we could all place a daffodil on the grass, lots of them, six feet apart? What if, on the grass of the the parks of our little village, we could spread daffodils marking six-foot-squares? And what if, in the parks by our seas, we could all gather on Easter Day in a Creed-free Zone? Silently? Socially-distanced but together. Do I mean to annoy liturgists? No. It’s just a side-benefit.
Ours is the only species that will create, watch, and calculate, its own demise on this planet.
“Nature amazes me. But nature has a long view. It’s patient. I guess they liked swimming back then. Cats, I mean. It is so dangerous to be sure of things a few millennia old.”
“We were made and set here, the writer Annie Dillard once wrote, “to give voice to our astonishments.”
The creed of one Christian denomination begins and ends with the words “We are not alone.” And though that is true, sometimes I want very much to be alone, to live on an island with a dog and some nice snacks. And a wood stove. Ok, and some books. And did I mention nice snacks?
I often wonder about Jesus asking us daily to reconsider our lives in discernment while never once mentioning worship as a goal.
Nobody likes rejection. And “family” is a word that forms the etymological base for “familiar.” In other words, we will stay in what is “familiar” no matter how dysfunctional because being rejected for speaking the truth to power will have consequences.