“Back to Normal”
That is the question on many of your minds, I am sure. When will we be “Back to normal?” When will we back in the church, back to worship, back being active in the community. Back at coffee hour. Back to “Memorial Players”. When will we be BACK?
This is heightened by the joint announcement from the Bishops of Maryland, DC and Virginia about a four phase plan for re-opening, and perhaps some reports you all have read about singing (or not singing) together as a risk vector for spreading COVID-19. Let me say first that in a week or so the Vestry will host a town hall conversation for all of us about ‘next steps’ and invite everyone the opportunity to ask all the questions you need to ask about what the next phase of life will look like for Memorial.
But let me say a few things here. First, it is important to say that whatever changes come they will likely be slow, piecemeal, and that we are a long way from ‘regular’ worship gatherings like we used to. This is, I know, not easy to hear. I am very much grieving the lack of our common life together and wake up most days wishing THIS would all just go away. That grief is real for me and for you, particularly if you have a long history with the church or with our church. I wholeheartedly affirm your feelings about this; we are all walking together in that grief.
I am heartened, however by Paul’s words to the Phillipians, when he was practicing ‘social distancing’ (locked up in a Roman prison):
Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Paul reminds us that God is at work in us. In Me! In you! Enabling us to do work for God’s pleasure.
Amidst all the uncertainty and lament - there is plenty of opportunity to do some interesting and wonderful things. Who would have ever thought of a ‘Virtual Mission Trip’ or ‘Virtual pilgrimage’, yet both of those are suddenly very possible! Suddenly we can bring in music from all over the Episcopal Church, we can invite preachers from across the country to preach with us. We can still serve as a valuable and significant voice in our community and in the larger community, especially if we engage our ‘Christian Imagination’ to do and be the Body of Christ in a physically distant virtually connected world.
So what can you imagine? What possibilities do you see?