Weary

I’m trying to be more active and healthier so I set my alarm to ring at 5 to the hour and then I walk for 5 minutes. When I’m at the Trinity building I pop on my mask and head from my office down to the sanctuary for my walking. Or at least that is what I usually do. Today, as mask mandates come back, I find myself resentful of the thing, choosing instead to walk back and forth in my office maskless. I’ve ben masking fairly consistently since masks became a thing in spring of 2020, but now, as the numbers of cases in several of states near the heights of the winter crisis, I find my self especially weary and down hearted.

I am soul tired and disappointed. Gathering back in the sanctuary has been wonderful and full of the holy, surprising movement of the spirit. In person school board meetings have been much more effective. Gathering with friends has been balm for our souls. Getting a glimpse of our before life perhaps is what makes the resurgence harder, but if I’m honest it’s my bone deep resentment of people that is really exhausting. I am talking about the people who won’t respect others, the folks who won’t read the American Academy of Pediatrics findings for themselves, but instead rely on what their favorite person on Twitter says about it, and the leaders who are too afraid of alienating voters to actually lead. I have family around the world and while there are lots of differences in cultures and countries the level of basic disregard for others seems to be an especially American phenomenon.

I’m weary of loving in the midst of so much chaos. I’m tired of holding the line in our church and articulating again and again why it is the lived out action of our Christian faith to wear masks. But I am going to keep going. Keep wearing my mask. Keep acting in love, because there is literally nothing else to do other than turn to the strength of God and live as I wish the world to be, but first I’m going to need a nap.

-Eilidh