New Year, New World

My motivation to speak had diminished to near-zero, though I believe a more accurate description might rather say that the number of things needing to be said had gone.  If I had something to say I'd have said it, because it helps to have a "thing" in mind when describing it in writing.

Well, I must have something now, and it has come through the last 3 weeks of sudden upheaval caused by the reaction to COVID-19, which has reached into my most personal space, my religion.  On March 10th I was content to consider the major reporting outlets as doing what they do best, stoking a wave of panic, and then riding it to the thrill of self-importance.  I could escape that panic because this disease is not a guaranteed death sentence, and seems to resemble the Flu, which we all hate, but put up with year after year (data so far have not killed this hypothesis).  I was content, I say, until the Archbishops modified liturgical behaviors, and then canceled shared meals, and then canceled most regular worship services, and then limited the few remaining services to minimum staff, offering video live streaming as a consolation to the excluded.  Because this came from the highest Church authorities, my feelings and perspective did, and do not, matter; obedience wins out as it's own moral imperative.  Consequently I went from content as exempt from the storm, to malcontent as the storm came to me, clearing the worship of worshipers.

I am returning to a place of stability through simple acceptance, and through embracing the Archbishop's wisdom, aligned to a very long moral tradition to obey the civil authorities.

Still, it's beginning to look like life as I knew it 3 weeks ago will not return.  Vestiges of this antiseptic etiquette are now being baked into our culture by force, held steady for a month, forming new modes of discourse within the public sphere around the most basic ingredients to human relationship: shared space, and the languages both of touch and spontaneous non-verbal expression.  It has taken this level of intrusion and upset to demonstrate the value of these fundamentals: "You don't know what you've got till it's gone."

Touch matters; others' non-verbal messages matter; feeling the weight of another's presence matters.
"Social Distancing" is an ugly phrase in so far as it antagonizes those core relational matters.

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