Sad, Again

Day 3: Wednesday, April 15, 2020

I’m sad again today. I wonder how many others around me are sad. My sadness is just a rather general malaise. Nothing specific has happened, nothing more than any other day’s specifics of how many cases of COVID-19 have been reported. Perhaps it was hearing that this day was the deadliest so far in the US with over 2000 “new” deaths today. Perhaps it is seeing all the TV reporters looking very world-weary, tired, tense, and discouraged. Perhaps it is hearing the talking-head experts who worry that two or three waves of the virus will occur before we find a vaccine or reach “herd immunity.”

I’m sad because I sat in two different zoom meetings today. In the first I heard a pastor who is almost beside herself with her need to be in (physical) touch with her parishioners. She reminded us that Jesus, just like all of us other human beings, had a body; he interacted with people through his physical presence. As relational creatures, we need to see, feel, be around other bodies. In the second meeting, my church’s board meeting, our pastor told us of the generosity of some of our members who are already offering their stimulus checks to the church to use for benevolent purposes, especially to help our members who have lost their jobs or have other hardships brought on by the necessary, but harsh, stay-at-home orders.

I’m sad because the university where I taught until last May is struggling through this crisis—I’ve heard more than one faculty or staff member say that things will not be the same when/if it reopens in the fall. And what is true for it is true for many other colleges and universities around the country. Especially our residential universities have already been hit hard by competition from the many online programs that seem to promise everything to the prospective student—lower costs, more programs, flexible scheduling. Of course, many of us in academia would say that negative aspects abound, too. Just as my friend the pastor knows how important human interaction with her parishioners is, so, too, professors know how much that human interaction adds to the educational process. Education is so much more than a list of facts or a compendium of knowledge in a discipline. So much happens in the interactions in a classroom—between professor and students and between students. I’m sad when I think that interaction might be lost for future students

I’m sad because as the missions council president at our church I had to report to the board that three mission trips have been cancelled for this summer. It’s sad that our church members who would have gone to work in other parts of the world will not get to do so. They won’t get the opportunity to build relationships with people from other cultures. It’s sad, too, that the churches and organizations that would have benefited from the projects that would have been funded—and finished—by our teams will not receive that help—not this year.

I’m sad because I have friends who have lost loved ones in this time of social distancing. They have not had the little bit of comfort that a wake or a viewing or a funeral would provide. Their friends cannot be in their physical presence. Often I have said, when speaking with a grieving friend, that I do not have words to express my sympathy. But I have known that just “being there” is important to that person. Now, that is impossible.

I’m sad because I have family members and friends who are facing the fight of their lives against cancer and other dangerous conditions. I can’t hug them; I can’t be with them when they are in the hospital; I can’t visit them.  I can’t be in their presence.

Yes, I’m sad today. I realized that as I chronicled my sadness, the common factor in almost all of my points is physical presence.  Long ago, a plain-spoken minister in the Church of the Nazarene wrote a little book with the title We Really Do Need Each Other. The times and circumstances have changed, but the truth of the title has not: We really do need each other.