From a Distance

I have been dealing with a lot of thoughts about how to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic as a pastor.  There have been some difficult decisions to make for sure.  At the end of last week, I asked the Session to vote to suspend all "in person" activities of the Church.  They agreed unanimously, for this I was grateful, because as of that moment we were ahead of the curve on this issue.  Our Presbytery had given us a recommendation, but as of the end of last week government had not provided the leadership we really need in moments like this.
Over the weekend I kept feeling more strongly that our decision had been the right one.  Every time I saw a doctor or an epidemiologist say that this "social distancing" practice is the only way we currently have to prevent the pandemic from becoming an event of tragic proportions.  There is no cure, there is no treatment really, we don't even have adequate testing capability (again thanks to denial and an attempt to minimize this crisis by our almost unbelievably inept administration).  The only thing we can do is to bring everything to a screeching halt in the hopes of physically preventing the transmission of the COVID-19 virus.
I often joke that my undergraduate education served only one function: to give me a piece of paper that was necessary for admission to Seminary.  However, in the past week the things I know about biology, and (Lord help me) statistics were pretty useful in analyzing what data we have available.  I know what an exponential growth curve looks like on paper, and in instances of contagion like this one, you get to see it in full horror-show mode.  The science of this thing was pretty clear a while ago, unfortunately we have made rather a habit of ignoring science when it comes to areas where we hold certain pathological "beliefs."  Our economic interest has been strangling our scientific response to climate change for 20 years.  COVID-19 just raised our temperature in a much more immediate and undeniable way than greenhouse gasses.
Even though it is not terribly scientific, it was the cancellation of the NCAA tournament that really snapped me out of the "keep calm and wash your hands" mentality.  It was the notion that something that stood to generate revenue in excess of one billion dollars would just be flat called off that made me think that maybe this wasn't just another chicken little moment.  I will admit that when it comes to weather events and other such impending doom I tend towards skepticism.  I was going down that road with this one too, but thankfully something told me to avoid that trap.
This virus has actually weaponized our own ability to keep calm and carry on against us.  It uses our greatest strength as a species: our social nature, as a tool to propagate itself as surely as the virus hijacks our cells to procreate.  Most of our strategies for survival involve banding together into communal structures and institutions that can give us the collective resources we need to surmount challenges.  This requires that as well, but somehow we must figure out how to do that from a distance.  So while in the face of wars and famines the church has often been a place of sanctuary and rallying together, in this crisis we have to tell people to stay away.  It seems wrong, but it's not.
The word pastor is derived from the pastoral role of a shepherd.  Everything in a shepherd's world would indicate that keeping the sheep together is the best way to keep them safe, except for in this case that's the opposite of the truth.  In the face of this, some new things are necessary, and maybe they have been necessary for a while.  We need to learn to use all the communications tools we have available, we need to consider what community really looks like in the face of a challenge like this, because something tells me this won't be the last time we face a problem like this.

And Then There Were Two

Elizabeth Warren just dropped out of the democratic primary.  We are down to Bernie and Biden, two almost eighty-year-old white guys.  I have been reserving my energy on this election cycle until it really matters, out of a need for sanity and spiritual survival.  But I have to say Liz dropping out makes me sort of sad, because I have felt like she was the smartest of the bunch for quite some time.  I feel like at least some of her inability to get traction in the primaries was a result of her unabashed intelligence.  There is a strong current in American culture that despises true intelligence. Isaac Asimov described it well:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread, winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

I have this sneaking suspicion that that tendency becomes even more vicious when it comes to women.  At this point, I'm sort of thinking that our first female president is going to have to come from the right, ala Margaret Thatcher, because she will have to be an "iron lady" that adheres to the take no prisoners sort of political tactics that the Republicans have mastered since Reagan.  We have already seen an inveterate politician (Clinton) and a brilliant and qualified organizer (Warren) fail because the American people couldn't find them "likable" enough.  Meanwhile male candidates can be deeply flawed, even dangerously so, as is the case with Trump, and still garner wildly irrational support.
Only time will tell if it was actually Warren's extensive "plans" that scared people off.  If they end up choosing Bernie Sanders, I think that will be proven false, because Bernie has even more "socialist" ideas with less clear details than Liz.  If they choose Biden, it will just be a case of the establishment going with the "safe" bet.  I get that impulse. I saw someone on Twitter say that the best campaign slogan for any of the Democrats would be, "If I'm elected president, you won't have to think about me every day."
Which is where I have been since this whole thing started.  I just want the Trump era to be over, it makes me feel sick to my stomach far too often.  I think that Liz Warren would have been a great president, she probably would have gotten maybe a quarter of her plans to see the light of day, even if she got eight years.  Most of the wildest dreams/nightmares like Medicare for all would have been DOA, but she would have made sure to put back some of the regulations that protect us from the most rapacious aspects of capitalism.  Unlike the current chief executive, she actually knows what those regulations he has been shredding like cheese were there to do.
I don't know, out of that whole raft of plans she had, which ones would have actually gotten implemented, but I do know that when our nation confronted a crisis she would have brought that intellect and that undeniable sanity to bear upon it, instead of just tweeting out of an irresponsible level of ignorance like you know who.
Maybe it's just the desire for some semblance of peace, but I think I'm coming down on Uncle Joe's team for right now, but I can't think of another single person that would make a better VP than Liz Warren.  I mean if Joe put her in charge of pretty much anything I would feel pretty good about that.  I mean a lot better than putting Mike "I don't believe in science" Pence in charge of a global pandemic response.
I guess I have always wondered if that isn't democracy's biggest flaw: we elect popular people.  It was true in School, it was never the brains that got elected class president, it was the kids that could schmooze the best.  I guess I always hoped that, like so many other things that change in adulthood, things would be different out here.  Sorry Liz, I wish I had the chance to vote for you.