Kardia Kaiomenē: A Portal

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.
Arundhati Roy

Greetings from Central Oregon. Three weeks ago, we moved across town into a one-bedroom cottage a couple blocks from what the Northern Paiute people called Towarnehiooks ("Deschutes River"). Our place is small and we are sheltering in. For the past six years, we have been working together while consistently navigating new contexts. Now a pandemic. We really are stuck with each other! We are learning firsthand the unique challenges that couples face in this new, indefinite season. And we are deeply grateful that, if indeed this pandemic is a portal into Another World, we get to walk through it together. Almost impossible to fathom it otherwise!

Since March 12, when March Madness was cancelled (and the pandemic season officially commenced), we've been pursuing even more mutual check-ins than usual. We've heard from friends and partners all over the place, from Orange County to Iceland, about their own unique challenges. Former teaching colleagues are screen-schooling with students while home-schooling their own children. Many seniors are isolated from children and grandchildren. Others are working vulnerable jobs at grocery stores and in hospitals. Young couples are getting married and having children without the presence of friends and family. Fellow pastors are figuring out how to facilitate Zoom church gatherings and pondering the future of the institution.

We received our federal stimulus checks via direct deposit last Wednesday. We are encouraged and challenged by the growing movement of middle-class folks who are donating some or all of their checks to friends, families and organizations who desperately need it right now. Our hearts are particularly heavy in solidarity with Black Detroiters now facing Covid-19 in addition to their struggles against water shut-offs, home foreclosures, job loss and health issues. We also feel close in Spirit to the undocumented who are taking on some of the most vulnerable jobs right now or who have lost work, but do not have access to federal stimulus monies.

Rev. Roz with the legendary Lola
West and the rest of the squad
we helped guide
in Aug 2019.

For friends and family who are considering contributing some or all of their stimulus monies, we offer a few possibilities for you to consider. Our dear friend Rev. Roslyn Bouier was interviewed on Democracy Now last week. She was bearing witness to many residents who still do not have running water in their homes, despite the governor of Michigan ordering the city to turn the taps back on. Rev. Roz runs a food pantry in the Brightmoor neighborhood of Detroit, one of the poorest sections of the city. The revolutionary women of We The People of Detroit have ramped up their water deliveries all over the city. Here in Central Oregon, our church has partnered with the Latino Community Association (LCA), which works with the growing immigrant population and the organization Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN) advocates for farm workers all over the state. Many states are reporting statistics showing that Black and Immigrant populations are getting hit much harder by the coronavirus because they lack access to health care, they continue to work crowded jobs with little or no protection and/or they have pre-existing conditions that intensify symptoms.

We continue to lift up and hold tightly those on ventilators and those who have joined the Ancestors and those left behind in grief and those who feel isolated from unarmed truth and unconditional love, for the doctors and nurses, for the undocumented and uninsured and unhoused, for the shut-off and shut-in, for the teachers who are screen-schooling and home-schooling at the same time and the students who lack attention or support or wifi, for Black and Immigrant and Indigenous peoples, for the extracted and displaced, for the pregnant mothers and the self-isolated grandmothers and for everyone crucified by imperial agendas.

Is it possible that this pandemic is a portal, a gateway from one world to the next? We love this idea. What will our world and our lives look like in September 2020 or April 2021 or January 2022? It is more mysterious and uncertain than ever. But we have agency and tools for spiritual transformation. We have a friend who works for a major American company and he received a memo from management at the end of last week ordering all employees to refrain from groups of 50 or more until at least June 2021. We will be in this season for awhile. There will be peaks and valleys, fast balls and curve balls, grief and gratitude. Let's keep checking in on each other so that we will emerge from this time deeper and stronger. So that we will not just "return to normal."