I heard a superstition years ago that whatever you are doing on New Year’s eve is indicative of that coming year. I don’t actually believe it, but it did make me laugh thinking about how my family rang in 2020. We had planned a New Year’s Eve party at our house. On December 28th both kids got a 24 hour stomach bug. On the 30th my husband and I woke up with the same bug. We discussed briefly how we would probably feel fine by New Year’s Eve, but for the sake of our guests, we better cancel our party. My dad (who lives with us) and brother (who was visiting) caught it the next day. We all forced ourselves to stay up until midnight, couldn’t stand to not open our Costco-sized bottle of champagne that we had bought for our party, “cheersed” to a sip that didn’t sit quite right and went to bed. On the morning of January 1st, 2020 we poured a large, now flat, bottle of champagne down the drain along with our plans for 2020.
I believe in a God who became incarnate in order to be close to us. I have found this “method” of being with people, in the flesh, especially when people are suffering, is one of the most healing and important things we can do for each other. I believe sharing meals around a table is a spiritual event. I believe smiling and holding hands is a beautiful sign of care and concern for others. I’m sure I’m not exaggerating, when I say in 2020, I have never done so little of all those things -being with people, sharing meals and smiling to people outside my household. The ethical framework that I had gotten pretty used to, got flipped upside down. In 2020, I show my care and concern for strangers by covering my smile, by not having large celebrations around a table, and even by, not being in person. It is a struggle.
However, as much as I struggle through these times, I know there can be fruit that comes out of this experience. One fruit, is a re-assessment of our ethical framework. As we’ve moved past the initial shock of complete quarantine, we’ve had to re-assess how we make our choices. We all have various ways that we make decisions-we listen to certain voices, we use our own reasoning, we make judgments based on the experiences we’ve had. There are a lot of loud opinions on what decisions we should be making, and I’ll admit, it is hard for me not to judge the ones that I don’t agree with. But rather than judging, I’m going to try to be thankful for the voices that in my reason and humble experience seem to be balancing the harm that comes from not having physical, social comfort vs. potentially spreading a virus whose harm is still largely unknown. My church leaders have been very consistent in their concern for the common good while also creatively attending to the needs of the vulnerable. Our culture is very suspicious of authority, but the truth is we have to trust someone sometimes. I hope we are learning whose voices are worthy of our trust ie whose voices have a strong enough history and foundation to be able to think through new paradigms. We never make decisions by ourselves and we never make decisions for only ourselves. I’ve never spent so much time weighing whether or not visiting a friend is a choice that could potentially cause harm, how much and how likely. Little decisions feel heavy, but maybe that’s a good thing.
That brings me to, what I hope is, a second (and related) fruit of 2020: a recognition of how connected we really are to each other. Mother Teresa said, “if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten we belong to each other.” Someone in China ate a sick bat and turned the world upside down. An invisible, unpredictable germ spreads and we don’t know how to protect vulnerable persons without causing different kinds of harm to others. I drive my car to support a friend and, meanwhile, I pour toxic fumes into the air. I donate clothes to those who are needy in our country, only to find out those clothes were made by children in terrible conditions in another country. I celebrate that a friend got a job/bought a house/graduated from college, completely unaware of the many underprivileged who were never considered for this lifestyle we enjoy. We are connected to each other. It is hard to do good without also causing harm. This has always been true, but this pandemic has brought it all to the forefront. We had become complacent in our life decisions. We knew some of our choices were harmful, but what else could we do? Now, we have a renewed opportunity to think through the second and third degree consequences of our every day choices. Will I come up with a perfect solution that only betters the lives and world around me? Probably not, and even if I did, I probably wouldn’t follow through. As St. Paul experienced, “I do not do the good I want to do” (Romans 7:19) I could succumb to guilt and fatalistically decide nothing matters, so why even try? On the other end I could live in denial and convince myself my decisions only affect me. Or, I can seek an awareness of how my choices may affect others, while not attempting to carry the weight of the world. I can seek out wise voices for guidance- experts in ethics, experts in medicine, experts in the particular field of which I’m seeking answers. I can trust that my little, every day decisions will cause a lot more change than I think, while my big actions (that I always seems to be dreaming of) are probably not as world-changing as I like to imagine, and so focus on my little, every day decisions.