A Coronavirus Gathering
Already suffering through abusive childhoods, lost loved ones, intimate betrayals, dying dreams, broken marriages, mental and physical illness, our Gathering was preparing to meet, with a focus on lament, when the CDC declared a pandemic.
More than a month after postponing, most of us in self quarantine, we received requests to connect our community in creative fashion, either blog or Zoom. In the oxymoronic belief we can be alone together, we decided to do both.
This multimedia blog contains writing, recorded songs and testimony, links to art, and an original music video — online presentations of the elements we had prepared for our previously scheduled time together.
During a time of necessary isolation, the need to stay connected rises to a new urgency. We have designed our blog in episodes so you can digest it in pieces or a single binge (if this has become your shelter-at-home habit).
After we’ve spent some time with this, we will meet through Zoom on (date TBD). Tracy has graciously agreed to set up the teleconference, and you will be receiving invitations and instructions soon. We invite you to virtually join in our Gathering.
I am tempted to name our virtual time together A Coronavirus Gathering, but that might get me arrested by an officer wearing a Darth Vader helmet due to a shortage of medical masks.
I have to confess: Nothing terrifies me more than that.
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In the strange weeks since postponement, living in the shadow of pandemic, our focus on lament rises on a wave of dread. Facing a best-case scenario of hundreds of thousands dead, a sputtering global economy, and the existential threat of life without toilet paper, lament forments.
The biblical word means “a passionate expression of grief or sorrow.” Synonyms include: strike, smite, cry-out, cut-off, and mourn.
My favorite, though, incites us to howl.
Just like Liam Neeson.
Quarantined in the rising blue of Carolina spring, I invite us to howl together.
To give raw voice to our suffering, loss and fear. To cry out to God to rescue us. To do something.
Covid19 strips bare our illusion of control and reminds us, as C.S. Lewis did 70 years ago, of a more grave reality:
Do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the [name any catastrophe] was invented. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
In a minor key, The Psalmist sings —
Man is like a breath;
his days are like a passing shadow.
For humanity bent in a broken world, the certainty of death is preceded by the promise of suffering. Ever since Abel’s spilt blood cried from the dust, we have endured the wounds of loss, pain, tyranny, abuse, poverty, disease, and all the idols that fail us.
One of my favorite authors, Annie Dillard, writes concisely —
No one gets out without getting chewed.
A virus is “simply a piece of bad news wrapped up in protein,” says one pandemic expert.
Bad-Ass Bad-News is the Coronavirus.
After Covid19 infects a person, the victim often remains symptom-free for two weeks, spreading cluessely a virus that replicates by sinking its teeth into your lungs and sucking out the RNA. Early tests indicate those who have suffered through it, and won, may not be immune.
In my opinion, this kind of an enemy deserves a better name, one more in keeping with the inner beast.
Coronavirus makes me think of drinking a cold one on an aqua-blue beach.
Covid19 sounds like a name big pharm rolls out for a billion-dollar drug treating rheumatoid arthritis or atrophic gastritis. Can you see the television ad with me? A little girl in a white dress, from a safe distance of six feet, blows a kiss to her grandfather while a yellow logo appears in blue sky.
With Covid19, you gotta love your chances.
No matter how you name it, the virus asks us to navigate unprecedented territory — world on hold, global economy on razor’s edge, and fear going more viral than the outbreak.
Lament, a foreign tongue in our culture, suddenly seems an appropriate response.
Like Mundo Cani, the depressed dog in The Book of the Dun Cow, we howl into the apocalyptic night --
Marooned … Marooned … Marooned ….
TIM: Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah
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Through our Gathering community, you teach me the art of encouragement. In my own battle with depression, you have shown me, again and again, what lies at the heart of the word — to build courage into another.
As the deadly virus continues to spread globally, courage is what we most need. Facing together persecution and death, huddled in homes, the Apostle Paul challenges the early Christians —
Encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today,’ so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.
In a time of pandemic, as a community of believers, we face a great temptation to fall into despair, retreat in fear, or simply resign in isolation. The real power of lament screams our despair and whispers hope at the same time.
Listen to Samwise the Servant’s encouragement to Frodo, a hobbit, a halfling, overwhelmed by Sauron’s enemies and the burden of bearing the One Ring.
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Into the human tragedy, the Gospel interrupts with true fairytale. It’s not so much that Sam holds onto wild hope; rather, it possesses him.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
In a stable, on the run from a king’s murderous edict, the breath of Mary’s newborn rises with sheep-dung steam. As the God of the cosmos pees into swaddling rags, Luke announces the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy:
The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light: they who dwell in the land of the shadow of death, the light shines.
With the incarnation, Philippians 2 tells us how low this future king will eventually go.
He made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
With his descent, a strange new kingdom seeds a focus on loving God and others. Instead of using power for the engine of greed, measuring profit in digits, King Jesus gives it away for the sake of the other, counting the cross a joy.
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In the opening scene of Tree of Life, the narrator examines two fundamentally differing motivations for living life.
Hank: Be Thou My Vision (with visuals)
Control is nature bent on survival, greed and power; Grace shapes by freely loving others.
In the words of the poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins:
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things
One of my favorite authors, pastor Frederick Buechner, describes the Kingdom as a subterranean river on fire, mostly invisible, radically dangerous, and unstoppable.
In grand minimalist style, Jesus sums up the law: Love God, love others.
To show us the way, he goes on to die a prisoner’s death on Golgotha, a skull-shaped execution site, so please know life in the Kingdom will likely split your guts open.
Living together on the breathtakingly beautiful and fucked-up planet, Jesus calls us to both lament and hope.
In his book, Dark Clouds: Discovering the Grace of Lament, Mark Vroegob finds significance in the word, Yet.
In the biblical study of lament, I’ve come to love the word Yet. It marks the place in the journey where pain and belief coexist. It is how we get the confidence to ask boldly, despite the sorrow and grief we feel. Yet means I choose to keep asking God for help, to cry out to him in our needs, even when the pain of life is real and raw.
Instead of a regimented march, following Jesus is more like a dance, the one between proton and electron. To lament and hope, at the same time, acknowledges the power resides in the tension.
Religion desires to dissect the mystery and make a terrible mess of things.
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In his book, Dark Clouds: Discovering the Grace of Lament, Mark Vroegob describes the paradox of the Kingdom — the beauty and the terror — in the word “yet”.
In the biblical study of lament, I’ve come to love the word Yet. It marks the place in the journey where pain and belief coexist. It is how we get the confidence to ask boldly, despite the sorrow and grief we feel. Yet means I choose to keep asking God for help, to cry out to him in our needs, even when the pain of life is real and raw.
Shortly before I read this excerpt from a book sent to me by Amy Beasley, a team of Gathering artists had begun work on a music video for the Switchfoot’s Yet.
Encouraged by Jon Foreman’s lyrics through a battle with depression, I wrote a script/storyboard for a music video. Will Osigian, a talented young filmmaker, shot the video, helped direct, and displayed nearly supernatural gifts in post. Tim Allmond, our worship leader, acted and provided a really cool space. Irene Beamish perfectly donned a $20 bright red Goodwill coat, impeccably played an other-worldly woman.
Our desire was to collaborate together to create a visual metaphor for life in the Kingdom — how God pursues us in ways mysterious, nearly invisible, supernatural and redemptive.
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As we lament and hope together, in quarantine, how can we best serve and encourage each other?
Share: jot down some ideas to share during our Zoom Gathering
For most of us, for now, that’s simple — root at home. In quarantine, against an invisible enemy, unleash the power of mental illness. During this pandemic, OCD remains my constant companion through endless goose-stepping missions of purging, cleaning and ordering. To feed my paranoia, I simply turn on the news; it feasts on Fox News. I could go on, but a blog is supposed to be short, and my string of illnesses long. Just to say, quarantine provides a safe place to let out the leash.
How else can you binge on The Tiger King?
As followers of Christ, let’s put a collective mental illness to obsessive use: wash hands, spray disinfectant, post on Facebook, binge TV, avoid hugging, stay home, rediscover your loved ones, regain perspective.
It’s not such a stretch.
For others of us, on the frontlines of care, the danger is surreal.
AMANDA VIDEO?
Prayer (Zoom)
Let’s pray together for Amanda, and all the others in our community called to risk their lives in their calling to serve others.
Let’s pray together for the best-case scenarios — deaths minimal, economy prospers, and a reawakening of priorities.
Just before animals peek through our windows to get a good look at a homo sapien, let us pray we will rise out of quarantine, grieving the terrible losses, and start life anew, bending toward the light of the Kingdom.
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If evolution alone is true, we must reverently observe this time as a purge — a blind life force leading us into an uncertain destination, tragic survival of the fittest, the strong naturally selected to eat the weak.
As followers of Christ, we must rediscover our true identity. In this scene from The King’s Speech, King George 6, a stammerer, begins to find his voice when he discovers his true identity.
As believers living in the fog of Covid19, we best encourage by returning together to a true identity:
Children of the king in his loving service.
As we help each other to live out of identity, personally and collectively, redemption takes root and possibilities bloom.
In this time of shaking, as a community, we are presented a unique opportunity to share the burden of suffering. From nature, here’s a powerful exploration:
Dee Gillespie posted on the Gathering’s Facebook page the link to a wonderful blog by Katherine and Jay Wolf. They write of the process of lament:
When we cried out to God, He answered. He gave us Himself by giving us other people. When our lives fracture, God is making space for His people to fill in the gaps. Suffering — on an individual level and at a global scale — unveils a profound opportunity for us, the Church, to make the invisible God visible to one another. When we choose to reframe suffering as a universalizing means of connection rather than a point of isolation, everything changes.
The individual no longer bears the burden of mustering up hope for herself because we get to tell each other, ‘We’ll hope for you until you can hope for yourself again.’
As Frodo laments terrible circumstances, Gandalf reminds the hobbit of a centering truth.
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In the sequence of the Gospels, Dr. Alexander J. Shaia, psychologist and spiritual director, finds a rhythm to the process of redemption, the cycle of Kingdom transformation.
Matthew: Surprise
Mark: Suffering
Luke: Joy
John: Service
In the movement, God equips us for greater participation in the Kingdom, the subterranean river of fire, rising up in unexpected springs of redemption.
What was intended for evil transforms into good.
We are drawn to the stories: the child of an abusive father works against human trafficking; the pharmacist, who after losing a son to overdose, exposes the role greed plays in the Opioid epidemic; the mother of a child lost by a drunk driver, inspires a harsher law, saving lives.
I recently was inspired by the story of Britten Olinger, an Asheville track coach paralyzed in a 2017 car crash, on his return to coaching others how to run a race well.
We all could tell stories of how adversity shapes new redemptive possibilities.
Share (Zoom)
Please give your attention, for now, to just one — Becky Morgan’s story of God’s redeeming love through much suffering.
As we eventually emerge from our homes, blinking against bright light, we face a choice: Return to life as normal, dysfunctional as it was, or choose a new life in service of the King.
The time we live in presents unparalleled Gospel opportunities.
Prayer (during Zoom)
Let us pray that the idols born out of greed and control continue to die so we can come alive.
Let us pray for a stronger Kingdom vision to take better care of each other and the home we share.
Let us pray, using Jon Foreman’s words again:
Why would I wait until the afterlife to come alive?
Let us pray to participate in Good News going viral.
Tim/Original Song (with visuals): Blue Sky
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Listen to the poet proclaim —
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.