A Reflection

On Tuesday, February 25th, my wife stood at the stove flipping pancakes on a hot griddle. We’d invited around 10 folks over to celebrate Shrove Tuesday. This was a new experience for almost all involved, but they quickly picked up on the only requirement: Eat and be merry.

Joy and I have grown to love this preface to Lent, not only because we like Pancakes, but because it reminds us of the beauty of liturgical tradition, especially the season of Lent. With the arrival and spread of COVID-19, we have all unwittingly become participants in this same season. The difference is that we didn’t have a Shrove Tuesday, a day that alerted us of the season of fasting that was about to come. No, for most of us, this happened pretty rapidly, and we weren’t afforded true preparation.

So, we panicked, we bought toilet paper, and hunkered down, and now we find ourselves waiting.

We wait for that day when we can walk back into our favorite restaurant, or for the opportunity to give our elderly grandmother a hug. For some, we long to return to work, and some of us pray that the schools save us from our children. Regardless of what we’re waiting on, for the first time in a long time, we are united through waiting, and united through hope.

Surprisingly, what accompanies my waiting is an ever-growing frustration. I am frustrated that it takes a global crisis for the loss of wages to matter. I am angered that even in the midst of thousands of lives being lost, the economy is what our leaders care about and not the death of citizens. I am frustrated that my career takes so many hours away from time with my children, something that I didn’t value until COVID. I hate that I don’t know how to farm and have to rely solely on the grocery store. I am deeply frustrated that it took three days of weaning from my regularly scheduled events to even be able to sit still and see the sunrise, showing my addictions to the speed of my previous life.

Waiting is apparently much more difficult than it seems, for it brings to the surface an awareness. Maybe that is intentional. Maybe the practice of fasting intentionally awakens us and causes us to change. Granted, this assessment is from a significant vantage point of privilege, but my frustration highlights for me what are systemic deficits. And anytime we see deficits, we unknowingly see solutions. Our unprobed solutions end up being the hope that unites us and helps us create a world of rightly ordered priorities.

I have hope that humans will begin to matter more than machines, as we lose humans due to the lack of machines. I have hope that “love thy neighbor” becomes more than a generic mantra but is consumed to the point of literal application. I have hope that the skies will remain clear, because we take the health of our earth seriously. I pray for more quiet nights where families play hopscotch, take long walks, and even learn a new hobby together. I have hope that we will slow down enough to notice the beauty of our daughter’s eyes or the infectious laughter of our sons.

Waiting awakens another component of our humanity. It is that shared humanity that draws us closer to each other. I suspect the full spectrum of human emotion is present in every living room where a loved one is absent, dependent upon a ventilator for survival. I also suspect that the full range of human emotion existed at the feet of Jesus on the Cross, and even in that huddled mess of leaderless disciples after Jesus’ death.

We are unified in our humanity, in our frustrations, and in our hope.

And today, we are unified in our waiting.

May we wait well, ever aware of the present need to simply be present, unsure of what tomorrow holds, but deeply aware of the moments that pass us by, awaiting to be taken advantage of.

May we not grow weary during this fast, for with every fast, there is a feast.

May the Resurrection of Jesus and the promise of defeat over death, sickness, and even poverty, empower us to step into the involuntary fasts of our neighbors and be light in what feels like darkness for so many.

Arthur Cameron Robinson

Reformed Episcopal Church, Spartanburg, SC