Who Should We Believe and What Should We Believe About COVID-19?...continued
If nothing else, COVID-19 has reinforced certain lessons we should have learned long ago. For example, when considering the questions, "Who should we believe and what should we believe about COVID-19?", I spent more time in the initial stages of the lockdown pouring over what I thought might be reliable sources and stories than I do now. It was a mixed blessing.
As the lockdown approached, it was helpful to gain an awareness of the common-sense measures of hand-washing (more frequently and thoroughly than I was used to) and minimizing physical contact (even before "social distancing" became our mantra). So my last journey into my Manhattan office (at the beginning of March) was a very careful and controlled one. Did it spare me contact with or being infected with COVID-19. I don't know. But it did make me feel more relaxed and "safe." Then came the lockdown.
Again, in the early stages, I read what I thought were reliable sources of information to gain some understanding of what our family needed to do to be "safe." Medical sources (doctors dealing with the disease) and scientific sources (researchers with specific expertise) heavily outweighed media sources and politicians' briefings. After some weeks, though, what originally seemed helpful became less so. Medical and scientific sources more and more contradicted each other. So who to believe and what to believe grew into "Should I spend any time reading or thinking about this or that claim?".
As the indefinite, even confusing nature of these sources became more evident, there was a short burst of frustration. I wanted answers, but they weren't forthcoming - just opinions and speculations. But frustration doesn't really accomplish anything. And so I quickly compared that initial frustration with similar frustrations that occur in my work. It's not uncommon for me to be confronted with problems that beg solutions, which solutions don't just pop up and introduce themselves. While I generally find the solutions, sometimes it takes more time and involves more dead ends than one might have initially desired. But, "C'est la Guerre," as the French might say.
That simple insight from my work life helped. But, as you might expect, it's just a band-aid for what was and has continued to be a sort of continually bleeding uncertainty. A better way - you might consider it a kind of cauterization of the wound - was to check in with my interior life. More than just check in, to keep it alive and kicking.
So I made sure I continued my morning routine: prayer, study, some moments of quiet meditation, spiritual reading. And I've continued to do my best to recollect myself - in both the calm and the frustration - and remain in the Presence of God. No matter how busy the day's work, no matter the new and often difficult twists and turns that our lock-down world brought to my world and the worlds of my clients, I've recalled that in some way this was and is all God's Plan - even as I avoided the temptation to try to "figure it out."
In that spirit, I offer these concluding words from Fr. Bertrand Weaver, C.P., who reminds us of what we should all keep front and center during this glorious Easter Season:
“While we gratefully repeat through the year the words which the Church places on our lips on Good Friday – ‘We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee, because by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world,’ let us also remember the words of the Mass and Office of Easter – ‘This is the day which the Lord hath made: let us rejoice and be glad in it.’ This attitude toward the Passion and Resurrection of our Lord is not only necessary for the proper development of the virtue of hope, but is also necessary if we are to grow in that joy which is one of the fruits of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our souls. We do not love the cross for its own sake. We embrace it because of the joy that follows our ready acceptance of it. In this we are only imitating our Divine Master, ‘Who for the joy set before Him, endured the Cross.’ The Psalmist was inspired to sing: ‘They who sow in tears, shall reap in joy.’ No matter how the thought is expressed, in these words of the Psalmist, or as we express it, ‘through the Cross, to the Crown,’ let us bear in mind that Easter could not have been much closer to Good Friday, and that, if we share the Cross with Him, we will reign with Him in eternal peace and glory.”
As the lockdown approached, it was helpful to gain an awareness of the common-sense measures of hand-washing (more frequently and thoroughly than I was used to) and minimizing physical contact (even before "social distancing" became our mantra). So my last journey into my Manhattan office (at the beginning of March) was a very careful and controlled one. Did it spare me contact with or being infected with COVID-19. I don't know. But it did make me feel more relaxed and "safe." Then came the lockdown.
Again, in the early stages, I read what I thought were reliable sources of information to gain some understanding of what our family needed to do to be "safe." Medical sources (doctors dealing with the disease) and scientific sources (researchers with specific expertise) heavily outweighed media sources and politicians' briefings. After some weeks, though, what originally seemed helpful became less so. Medical and scientific sources more and more contradicted each other. So who to believe and what to believe grew into "Should I spend any time reading or thinking about this or that claim?".
As the indefinite, even confusing nature of these sources became more evident, there was a short burst of frustration. I wanted answers, but they weren't forthcoming - just opinions and speculations. But frustration doesn't really accomplish anything. And so I quickly compared that initial frustration with similar frustrations that occur in my work. It's not uncommon for me to be confronted with problems that beg solutions, which solutions don't just pop up and introduce themselves. While I generally find the solutions, sometimes it takes more time and involves more dead ends than one might have initially desired. But, "C'est la Guerre," as the French might say.
That simple insight from my work life helped. But, as you might expect, it's just a band-aid for what was and has continued to be a sort of continually bleeding uncertainty. A better way - you might consider it a kind of cauterization of the wound - was to check in with my interior life. More than just check in, to keep it alive and kicking.
So I made sure I continued my morning routine: prayer, study, some moments of quiet meditation, spiritual reading. And I've continued to do my best to recollect myself - in both the calm and the frustration - and remain in the Presence of God. No matter how busy the day's work, no matter the new and often difficult twists and turns that our lock-down world brought to my world and the worlds of my clients, I've recalled that in some way this was and is all God's Plan - even as I avoided the temptation to try to "figure it out."
In that spirit, I offer these concluding words from Fr. Bertrand Weaver, C.P., who reminds us of what we should all keep front and center during this glorious Easter Season:
“While we gratefully repeat through the year the words which the Church places on our lips on Good Friday – ‘We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee, because by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world,’ let us also remember the words of the Mass and Office of Easter – ‘This is the day which the Lord hath made: let us rejoice and be glad in it.’ This attitude toward the Passion and Resurrection of our Lord is not only necessary for the proper development of the virtue of hope, but is also necessary if we are to grow in that joy which is one of the fruits of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our souls. We do not love the cross for its own sake. We embrace it because of the joy that follows our ready acceptance of it. In this we are only imitating our Divine Master, ‘Who for the joy set before Him, endured the Cross.’ The Psalmist was inspired to sing: ‘They who sow in tears, shall reap in joy.’ No matter how the thought is expressed, in these words of the Psalmist, or as we express it, ‘through the Cross, to the Crown,’ let us bear in mind that Easter could not have been much closer to Good Friday, and that, if we share the Cross with Him, we will reign with Him in eternal peace and glory.”
Happy Easter!
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